Predestination: John Calvin vs. Thomas Aquinas
May 23rd, 2009 | By Taylor Marshall | Category: Blog PostsIn his third book of the Institutes of the Christian Religion (chs. 21-24), Calvin articulates his developed doctrine of predestination and reprobation. In chapter 21 in particular, Calvin denies that God’s prescience (“foreknowledge”) is the cause of predestination.
Thomas Aquinas makes a similar argument in Summa theologiae I, q. 23, a. 5. First, Thomas refutes three versions of predestination in light of God’s foreknowledge of human merit. The first he identifies with Origen, namely that souls pre-merited their final states before becoming embodied in time. The second he identifies with the Pelagian error holding that good begins within us and receives its consummation in grace by God. Both theories of predestination are incorrect according to Thomas because each confuses the order of causality. The final cause is always prior in the order of execution and not conditional on intermediary causes. A third option is put forth and also rejected, namely that God gives grace to those whom he knows will rightly use it. This seems less Pelagian, but this theory also places the cause of salvation in us and not in God. Here also grace fails to be grace.
Before appealing to God’s will, Thomas secures the goodness of God by appealing to his previous understanding of providence as it relates to primary and secondary causes (I, q. 22, a. 3). Free will is a secondary cause flowing out from predestination. This distinction ensures that God is not the direct cause of murder or final damnation. This is where Calvin departs from Saint Thomas. In chapter 23 of Book III of the Institutes, Calvin seems to deny the distinction between primary and secondary causation. Calvin mocks those who want to wedge in the claim that the wicked perish by the permission of God and not by the will of God. “The first man fell because the Lord deemed it meet that he should: why he deemed it meet, we know not.” Calvin then asserts: “It is certain, however, that it was just, because he saw that his own glory would thereby be displayed.” It seems contrary to justice, but Calvin confirms the decree to sin was just because God obviously cannot be unjust. This argument is circular and rather unsatisfying.
Compare Calvin to Saint Thomas Aquinas. In his reply to the third objection (I, q. 23, a. 5, ad. 3), Thomas states: “The reason for the predestination of some, and reprobation of others, must be sought for in the goodness of God.” Thomas centers his discussion of predestination on God’s goodness. Appealing back to his discussion on divine providence, Thomas writes: “God allows some evils, lest many good things should never happen, as was said above” (i.e. I, q. 22, a. 2).
I still find Thomas’ solution somewhat troubling, but it does seem to track with Pauline passages that discuss election and predestination. It is troubling because it seems to indicate that God loves some more than others. The now deceased priest and theologian Rev. William Most recently proposed a modified Thomistic solution. Most suggested the following logical order in the decree of God’s predestination. First, God wills all to be saved (1 Tim 2:4). Next, God foresees only those who will reject grace persistently and finally. Third, he predestinates all those not in this number to final glory. The beauty of this solution is that God does not predestinate the elect for their own foreseen merits and only damns the reprobate for their sins and their rejection of grace. No one is chosen because he would have done anything of merit. The predestinate are still predestined ante proevisa merita. The decree of predestination is negative with respect to the final state of the predestinate. I find this opinion a bit more satisfying, because it protects the Thomistic emphasis on the gratuity of grace. The predestinate are not strictly chosen for anything they have done. Rather, the elect are predestinate because they are not reprobate. God only foresees the demerits of the damned and then makes his decision based on his own standard of justice. We might even say that the predestinate are chosen only because of God’s goodness, as He is under no obligation to save them since they are sinners. Thomas does not entertain this objection, nor does he offer it as a solution. I wonder whether he would have found it compelling.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on Father Most’s position or on the distinctions made by Thomas Aquinas and/or John Calvin.
Follow Taylor Marshall @TaylorRMarshall or visit his blog at www.taylormarshall.com
One interesting critique of “God loves some more than others” is that it gives no explanation for why God loves X more than Y…apart from a purely random choice (and yet God is not random). If Bob and Sam are both equally in sin, and nothing in them or done by them is taken into account, then the choice of one over the other is purely random. It’s like reaching into a bag of marbles.
Another interesting point is that chapters like Romans 9 are often seen as unconditional election passages, yet reading 9 carefully, along with 10 and 11 (and looking back to the context of their OT references), reveals a more balanced view, which is that Israel had a long history of stubbornly refusing to submit to God and thus were rejected. It is interesting to note that Paul saying things like “it is my desire that they be saved,” along with “those branches broken off can be grafted in again,” among other comments, that have caused me to consider this issue more carefully.
I think it can be reasonably doubted, without danger to faith, that the New Testament actually teaches anything regarding the election and predestination of individuals as such. These terms are only used in the context of explaining how a previously “non-chosen” people have become “chosen” and vice versa.
If Jacob and Esau are understood as types, then Romans 9-11 need not be read as containing any metaphysical claims about the destiny of individuals. Rather, the discussion addresses questions about salvation history and God’s relationship toward the people of the old Covenant in light of the new one.
That said, I also appreciate Fr. Most’s take on predestination. I simply wonder whether the problem he’s attempting to solve even needs to exist as a theological problem. If we approach Paul on his own terms, which are rather more typological and Jewish than metaphysical, the problem may in fact disappear.
What actually made Romans 9-11 clearer to me, odd as it may sound, was reading Paul’s argument backwards– that is, reading the chapters in reverse order, 11/10/9. (Not “backwards” by verse, of course, but only by chapter.) The purpose of the entire discussion was made much clearer this way.
After I began to read these passages differently, Jacob Michael’s articles (“The Riddle of Romans 9″ and “Rescuing Romans from the Reformers”) helped me put together the Old Testament background and really appreciate Paul as the (literally) “ultimate” Jewish theologian. These can still be found through http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.lumengentleman.com
Marshall,
How can you possibly leave out Augustine in this discussion? His views on predestination and the contrast he sets up against the foreknowledge of the Greek Fathers is well known and fascinating. I would rather agree with Augustine’s reading of the Pauline texts (1 Tim 2:4, et al) which he is clear refers not to all people but rather to the class of people that are ultimately elect over against Most’s formulation. Augustine was immensely influential on the “magisterial” Reformers (granted they went much further than Augustine in downplaying free-will) on the doctrine of predestination and the link should be made.
________________________
R. E. Aguirre
Paradoseis Journal
Taylor,
It seems to me that the most important question in this context and in relation to our aim of reconciling Reformed Protestants with the Catholic Church is this: What positions does the Catholic Church allow, and what does the Catholic Church condemn, with respect to this subject of predestination?
Given that within those guidelines, there remain open (unresolved) questions and different permitted answers, it seems to me important first to lay out those guidelines, because everything that is *within* those guidelines is not cause for schism, but can be an open question as an in-house matter.
The Catholic Church does teach definitively that some people are predestined to heaven through grace. We can see this in the canons of Trent 6. She also teaches that some are destined to hell, on the basis of their foreseen sin and free rejection of God, as just retribution for their sin. But she teaches that no one is predestined to sin. (See the Second Council of Orange) God’s foreknowledge imparts no necessity on man’s free will. Likewise, man’s will remains free under the influence of grace. (Trent 6 can. 4) Grace is resistable. No one perishes because he is unable to be saved, but because he is unwilling to be saved. God desires all men, without exception, to be saved. God gives sufficient grace [for salvation] to all men, yet not all men are saved.
As for the question concerning why in some persons sufficient grace is efficacious, and in other persons, sufficient grace is not efficacious (is it because of a qualitative difference in the grace given, or because of a difference in the willed response), the Church has (for now) left that question open. That entails that a Catholic may believe that God gives sufficient grace to all, but gives efficient grace only to some. A Catholic may, alternatively, believe that what makes sufficient grace efficient is the free acceptance by the will, and what makes sufficient grace not efficient is the free rejection by the will. A Catholic may, alternatively, prescind altogether from answering this question. This question (in this paragraph) is an open-question within the Catholic Church, and therefore need not be a cause for division.
In the peace of Christ,
- Bryan
I second Bryan’s observations about the doctrine of predestination’s place in the bigger discussion of our being called to communion. But as the Calvinist position is outside the permissible bounds of the Catholic faith, the discussion is vital. I look forward to the articles section of this site getting there in due time.
In reading about Aquinas’ position on predestination, I found it difficult to articulate with precision the difference between his view and Calvin’s. There certainly is a difference, but not one that is easy to articulate (because the subject is so nuanced, perhaps). I believe that Aquinas’ view is close to Calvinism in the ways that are so important to Calvinists, ways that were ‘non-negotiables’ for me: grace is unmerited, God’s sovereignty will efficaciously see His elect reach Heaven, et cetera. This should be an area for agreement before it is an area for division.
And when Aquinas says that God loves some more than others (predilection), he does not say God randomly loves some over others. Was (the often rebellious) David a man after God’s own heart because God randomly selected him? I think not. Artists and musical composers can create a variety of fine works with some that are particularly dear to them. The reason for the difference is the mystery involved in this doctrine.
Peace in Christ,
Tom
Taylor,
Not all the Reformed agree here with Calvin as some seem like Thomas or Augustine. For example, a Systematics professor taught us that we should believe and teach a “passive reprobation” where God damns the reprobate for their demerits but predestines the elect out of his love for them (at least). This would be consistent with the Reformed infralapsarian view of predestination, where God permits the fall of mankind but having foreseen it he predestines some to glory while some others he passes over and leaves them in their sins. I recall Dordt speaking with an infralapsarian twang while the Westminster confession is somewhat ambiguous.
I do not think, however, that Catholics would agree with Westminster that Adam’s guilt was imputed to the fallen mass of humanity. Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong on that.
Tom,
I agree that in certain respects Calvin’s theology of predestination is similar to that of Aquinas. But if there were no significant differences between Aquinas and Calvin on the subject of predestination, then Calvin’s position wouldn’t be “outside of the permissible bounds of the Catholic faith”, given that Aquinas’s position is within the permissible bounds of the Catholic faith.
The Catholic Encyclopedia article on ‘predestination’ gives three limiting conditions for any orthodox theory on predestination and reprobation:
For Calvin, God predestined men to hell and sin in the same ‘positive’ way He predestined the elect to heaven. (See Institutes III.XXII.11; XXIII) So, that would put Calvin’s doctrine at odds with the second and third conditions directly above. But Aquinas’s doctrine would satisfy all three conditions.
In the peace of Christ,
- Bryan
Bryan,
(A) At least in the order of execution in time (in ordine executionis) the meritorious works of the predestined are the partial cause of their eternal happiness;
This seems to really contradict the purposes given for election in Romans 9 concerning Jacob and Essau. 10 And not only that, but also when Rebecca had conceived children by one husband, our father Isaac,
before they had yet been born or had done anything, good or bad, in order that God’s elective plan might continue, not by works but by his call–she was told, “The older shall serve the younger.”
NAB
This verse seems to specificially be saying that (at least in the case of Jacob and Essau), there is no consideration of the “meritorious works of the predestined.” I’d love some insight.
Thanks, – Jeremy
Dear Bryan,
No argument from me. I realize that the conclusion (positive election to damnation or not) is dramatically different. I would have a hard time articulating the premises and nuances that led to that conclusion or flowed from it.
Peace in Christ,
Tom
Jeremy,
There is a certain (unfortunate) ambiguity in the term ‘partial cause’ in the context of a discussion on predestination. Perhaps I can clear it up. Consider all the passages in the New Testament about receiving an eternal reward in heaven for the good we do in this life. You know them. If this reward did not contribute to our eternal happiness, then it wouldn’t be a reward because we wouldn’t want it. Our actions are eternal, in a certain respect, in that they redound into eternity. Our history is always part of who we are, and is always carried with us. At the Final Judgment, everything we have ever done will be laid bare for all to see, eternally. Those who have led many to righteousness will shine like the stars forever and ever. (Daniel 12:3) The greater the righteousness of our lives, the more will be our share in His glory. You’ve seen the bumpersticker: “He who dies with the most toys wins.” But the analogous Catholic bumpersticker would be: “He who dies with the most charity wins.” The greater our charity here, the greater our happiness and joy there. We are in a race, surrounded, as it were, by a great cloud of witnesses. There are heroes in many earthly battles and wars. There are lauded athletes in many sports; simply flip on ESPN. But these are all merely earthly types of the greatest heroes of all time: the saints. The Catholic doctrine is that not all persons in heaven are equally happy, even though each person in heaven is as happy as he or she can be. Last year, in On Imitations and the Gospel, I wrote:
That’s what the first of the three conditions in the selection I quoted from the Catholic encyclopedia article is saying. The good deeds of those having sanctifying grace, are a partial cause of their eternal happiness. In other words, our choices, our actions, our words, our acts of charity, really and truly contribute to (increase) our eternal happiness. Grace does not destroy nature. Grace does not wipe out justice, or wipe out the Final Judgment. Grace does not give us an end-around on the Day of Judgment, so that we slip around the backside of the Judge, or hide behind Christ. He is the Judge! Grace (which was merited for us by Christ) allows us in this life truly and genuinely to merit on that Day those everlasting words than which no other words in any time or place can compare in worth: “Well done, good and faithful servant; enter into the joy of your Master.”
In the peace of Christ,
- Bryan
Bryan,
Trent does say that grace is resistible but one could argue that that resistibility is only temporal – that, in the end, God will always have his way. Hebrews 12 teaches us that God chastens his people and that we may even know that we are his by this chastening. We may resist God’s grace but he will continue to chase us until we surrender.
Also, thank you for the point you made about Calvin’s comment about God predestining both the elect and the damned in the same ‘positive way.’ God does not desire or “predestine” that people go to hell it’s simply the only other place to go.
Mike
Gentlemen, I would love to add something intelligent to this discussion, but it seems to be all hammered out. Quite frankly, I am looking up at giants in this arena. Many thanks to each of you for schooling me. I thought the article was interesting and the discussion following it made it even better.
Brian, your 5 cents as per usual knocked me right out of the ballpark, and I landed a little closer to the jumping off point. I am regularly amazed at your thorough knowledge, which you hand over in a concise fashion.
Be blessed for the sake of Christ brothers,
-g-
Bryan Cross:
One could also believe that God’s grace is always efficacious because God’s grace is never wasted. If a person rejects the saving grace that is offered to him, that grace is then given to another person that accepts that grace.
It’s so great what this website is doing!
I know this is old, but I wanted to throw my hat in the ring…
We should not be too quick to assume that what Calvinists actually believed was outside the bounds of Catholic Orthodoxy. Trent’s job was not to interpret the writings of the Reformers, but to state dogmatic truth and reject error. So, it takes more work to show that a particular Protestant position is actually condemned by Trent.
During the Synod of Dordt, where Arminianism and Calvinism definitively parted ways, the Calvinist side (even the most rigorously orthodox Counter-Remonstrants) drew not only on Aquinas but on post-Tridentine Dominican theologians like Domingo Banez and others. They saw the harmony between their position and that of the Thomists (which is obviously within the bounds of Catholic orthodxy, as the Congregatio de Auxiliis made quite clear). This is significant for this discussion I think.
Unfortunately, the Dominicans of this period rarely addressed the writings of the Reformed theologians, especially the ones that came a few decades after Calvin. When they did, they emphasized that the key problems were that Calvin’s position made God the author of evil. But this is where history gets interesting again. A number of Calvinist theologians in later decades explicitly stated that they needed to clarify Calvin’s view of free will and demonstrate that God is absolutely not the cause of evil; they were quite clear that, while God’s will is infallibly efficacious (something any Thomist would agree with), there are still genuine secondary causes, including the human will!
Look at these words from the Westminster Confession, Chapter III:
“I. God from all eternity, did, by the most wise and holy counsel of His own will, freely, and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass;[1] yet so, as thereby neither is God the author of sin,[2] nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures; nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established.[3]”
So, I’m not really sure that, when it comes to predestination itself, there is any fundamental difference between Calvinism (particularly as it developed in later centuries) and Thomism (particularly in its clearest Banezian form) and, consequently, Reformed views of predestination (I am not talking about justification here, etc.) are within the bounds of Catholic orthodoxy. Thoughts?
Concerning predestination I would think we should take a long look at the flood account in the Old Testament. God predetermined before hand the measurements of the Ark. This act of God resulted in a complete redemption of the cosmos (world). Argue as you may… Our Creed states, “Who for US and our salvation He came down from heaven”. The purpose of God is clear…”He came to seek and SAVE that which was lost”. Admittedly it is a difficult doctrine, especially when multitudes of unorthodox preachers have been let loose to pervert our Lord’s gospel. In the garden we see man hiding and God seeking…..man covering himself and God covering man. Again, it is God who applies the atonement….not man’s free will.
Randy,
So man does nothing?
It is true that God’s grace is all in all, but God’s grace enables man to act. There is a response. God initiates it, of course. He also gives us the grace to respond and persevere. That’s the Catholic Faith.
Where we Catholics differ with the Calvinists is that we don’t presume to call ourselves predestinate. Instead we live so as to make our calling and election sure. This is the teaching of Christ, Paul, and all the saints.
in Christ,
Taylor
Taylor,
Sure, Man does something. He responds to God’s call through the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit makes alive those who are dead in trespasses and sins. I certainly agree that we must make our calling and election sure….by working out our salvation with fear and trembling….for it is God who is at work in us both to will and to do His good pleasure. My argument rest on the design of God’s atonement….which doesn’t include all therefore it is predetermined…If indeed the whole creation groans and travails for their redemption…and will receive it effectually (through God’s design and with out volition) Then the atonement for the elect stands by design and not by man’s decision. I simply state as a Anglo Catholic…..that my prayer is for unity….If we deny the unity of the Trinity in salvation then as Catholics how can we expect to win unity in His Church? St. John 17.
God’s Peace
Randy
Randy,
You write:
He responds to God’s call through the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit.
I say, “Amen!”
You write:
The Spirit makes alive those who are dead in trespasses and sins. I certainly agree that we must make our calling and election sure….by working out our salvation with fear and trembling….for it is God who is at work in us both to will and to do His good pleasure.
Again I say, “Amen!”
You write:
My argument rest on the design of God’s atonement….which doesn’t include all therefore it is predetermined…
I say, “Wait a second. That’s not biblical!”
Where does it say in Scripture that the atonement doesn’t include all?
On the contrary Scripture says that Christ died for all men:
The atonement does effect every man, woman, and child. All shall rise from the dead on account of the New Adam’s resurrection. Some shall go to glory. Some shall go to perdition. Christ shall raise all by the virtue of his death and resurrection. He died for all.
Scripture states that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit desire that all men be saved. The economy of salvation includes all – each and every. Christ died for every single human from Adam to the last baby to be born. Each goes to Hell for rejecting the Logos that illuminates every man, not because the Logos didn’t die for each and every. Limited atonement is the heresy of the Jansenists – condemned by the Church.
in Christ,
Taylor Marshall
Taylor,
Thank you for your response…..funny you should mention the phrase “that’s not biblical”. That is usually a charge the Protestant gives to a Catholic. Anyway, as I read further into the context of Christ suffering and tasting death for all men…I also read “His death bringing many sons into glory”…”He that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified, are all one…so He is not ashamed to call them brethren”. “For verily He took upon Him the seed of Abraham (not Adam) Wherefore it behooved him to be made like unto his brethren that He might become their High Priest to make reconciliation for the sins of the people”. Finally, you commented on Christ making a sacrifice through His death” from Adam to the last baby born”. But we read in 1Sam. 3:14 that “And therefore I have sworn unto the house of Eli that the iniquity of Eli’s house shall not be purged with sacrifice nor offering for ever.”
It does us no good to take this disputed topic blow by blow….greater minds than we… have beaten the hell out of each other over the ages. We both want God to be Glorified. I’m sure you have done your homework on this and many more important doctrines. I truly enjoy our conversation and this format. I too want and pray that the Latin, Greek, and English Church will soon become one. This website is a wonderful start!
God Bless
Randy
Randy,
The last biblical quote is a good one showing that Christ is a high priest for those who aren’t necessarily in the Church. Christ took hold of the seed of Abraham and is the high priest of “the people.” Here the author speaks of the Hebrew nation and yet not all Hebrews are saved. Thus, the intercessory vocation of Christ is not infallible. A good example of this is when Christ proclaimed on the cross as priest: “Father forgive them they know not what they do.” This did not immediately entail that everyone involved in the crucifixion was justified on the spot.
Christ redeems. Christ initiates with grace. Christ sends His Spirit. Man, through grace, must respond. I’m not claiming how this mysterious tension is resolved…I am saying (with the Holy Church – East and West) that limited atonement is NOT the orthodox solution.
Let us continue to pray that all baptized Christians enjoy full Eucharistic communion with one another and with the See of Peter.
Godspeed,
Taylor Marshall
Again, sorry for barging in late in the game, but I was reading this Question in the Summa, and I was wondering how well it does (or doesn’t) square with the views of most Calvinists on Limited Atonement:
http://www.newadvent.org/summa/4048.htm
This work also seems to muddy the waters a bit, suggesting that there was not much (if any) space between the views of Calvin and the scholastics on this matter, accepting “sufficient for all, efficient for the elect.”
http://books.google.com/books?id=f2BohPQyuCkC&pg=PA74&dq=Limited+Atonement+Thomas+Aquinas&ei=aGA_S_H5KJeCygTRk4X7Cg&hl=it&cd=2#v=onepage&q=Limited%20Atonement%20Thomas%20Aquinas&f=false
God bless and Happy New Year!
Taylor,
Very anti climatic… So, “God gave Christ to die for all men, but upon this condition: that they perform that which of themselves, without Christ, they cannot perform.” Gary Long from the book Definite Atonement. Well, as Luther stated “Free Will or no Free Will is the hinge wherewith the whole doctrine of salvation swings….thus the Church remains divided…..I’m surprised how precise and accurate men penned the Word of God….let’s hope they got it right….you know God would never impose his Will on anyone. I’ve never meet a healthy family yet who insists that they (individual) were right beyond fault. I’m not close to being out of bullets….but I can’t hit a target as elusive as the Roman Church. So, go ahead with your next round….I’m sure you want the last word…I mean the Church’s last word.
your brother in Christ,
Randy
Taylor,
Didn’t mean to sound so snotty….now that I think about it I was a little bent. I too have made a tremendous journey since I first believed. I would never say that I have arrived or comprehended the vastness that surrounds the mysteries of God. It seems a lot of the writers at this site have journeyed much the same road that I am on now. My wife and I are Episcopalians and attend the Church of the Incarnation Dallas. I have attended RCIA classes and considered crossing the Tiber. I found myself with more questions than solid answers when attending St. Thomas Aquinas Dallas. I’ve also attended Believer’s Chapel Dallas early on during my Christian growth. I say all that to say this…I find your website intriguing but not compelling. Again, I apologize for the last post….have a blessed New Year and pray that I will grow in Grace and truth.
In the name of our King,
Randy
Good dialogue!
Grace is person! We are saved by grace.
Here’s the solution to the matter:
We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that IN HIM we might be come the righteousness of God.”
Taylor,
I appreciate your well thought out article and the site. The mission statement of uniting the church is great. I started out on my christian journey as a Pentacostal and have been a Presbyterian for 10 years. More recently I have been convinced by the “federal vision” brand of Reformed theology and along with this, I have a desire for more liturgy and less self in my religion.
I find it ironic that reformed protestants (myself included) deny free will in the initiation of justification, but claim it for themselves in other matters such as interpretation of the scritures and church authority. Having been reformed for 10 years (in the PCA) I can say that people in my church that seem to really love Truth and devote themselves to theology don’t hang around too long. Like good protestants they LEAVE to attend a fellowship that satiates whatever small disagreement they have or, more true to form, make a new denomination that is tailor made (CREC). Having said this, I think Catholiscism errs in the same way by PRONOUNCING to often as opposed to simply denouncing real heresy. This topic (calvinism) is a good example of one that does not need to be commented upon by the Church in an official way. It is a topic that concerns profound MYSTERY and to dice it down to the point where we are saying what is in the mind of God is just silly. (supra and infra lapsarianism for instance). These are mysteries to be meditated upon, not pronounced upon by anathemas of popes or books by overly intelectual reformers.
Now for my real point, there is a total contradiction in the following statement from your post in the quote of Rev. William Most:
First, God wills all to be saved (1 Tim 2:4). Next, God foresees only those who will reject grace persistently and finally. Third, he predestinates all those not in this number to final glory. The beauty of this solution is that God does not predestinate the elect for their own foreseen merits and only damns the reprobate for their sins and their rejection of grace.
“God does not predestinate the elect for their own forseen merits” contradicts “God predestinates all those who do not reject grace persistently and finally” (my restatement)
Sorry, but this is the same arminian argument about foreknowledge that christians need to get over. The fact is, anything that happens is because God wants it to happen. This is a profound mystery that we do not like, but it is reality.
In my opinion if we have a proper view of the extent of mans condition in sin, and how that sin affects his will, The question quickly becomes “why does God save anyone at all?” instead of our presumtuous “why does God choose some and not others?”
The fact is, He chooses some and not others. If this was not the case, we would all be bound for hell.
Praise God he chooses some to make alive by His spirit so they can THEN freely choose Him.
The best analogy of how all this works that helps me harmonize all that the scripture has to say about God’s sovereignty is this:
As Doug Wilson would say, does Hamlet have free will? of course. Does Shakspeare have free will and total sovereignty over Hamlet? of course. Can Hamlet complain his will is being violated? no. Is he responsible for his choices? yes.
This is God’s story we are living in, our choices matter for eternity, but without God FIRST quickening our heart into new life by the Spirit, we will not and cannot choose life through Christ. If He does quicken our hearts, who would be so bold to say that he would then leave it up to a sinner to decide his own fate? As sinners we would always choose death. Only by his Spirit do we have hope.
Here is to christians leaving some things to mystery and not making these more minor mysteries matters of anathemas.
Sorry for writing a book here!
Love in Christ,
David
David,
Two points. First, there is no contradiction in Fr. Most’s statements. Not resisting grace, is not meritorious. And since it is not meritorious, it is not a foreseen merit. And therefore it is compatible with the truth that God does not predestine the elect for their own foreseen merit.
Second, if God were to offer sufficient grace (for salvation) to some, but not to others, then it could not rightly be said that He truly desires all men to be saved, and does not wish for any to perish. But Scripture teaches that God desires all men to be saved, and come to a knowledge of the truth (1 Tim 2:4), and does not wish for any to perish but for all to come to repentance (2 Pet 3:9). Therefore, we believe that God offers sufficient grace to all men.
I assume you have either read the book Lorna Doone, or seen the film. If you have, you know the intense hatred between John Ridd and Carver Doone. Carver had killed John Ridd’s father in cold blood when John was a child. (Spoiler alert) At the end of the story, John is finally marrying the woman he truly loves (Lorna), and Carver Doone enters the church and shoots Lorna as they are at the altar, just after exchanging vows. Carver then runs away, and John goes after him, presumably intending to kill him. They fight, and then Carver steps into a bog (like quick-sand). John sits there for about four seconds, and then, even though everything in him hates Carver and wishes to see him die, he looks around for a stick. And seeing no stick, he reaches out his hand to Carver, offering to pull him out of the bog. Here’s the scene (it is the first four minutes of the video):
Could you really worship a being who was morally inferior to John Ridd, i.e. a being who purposely refused to offer the grace of repentance to some persons sliding into eternal hell, but instead just sat and watched them sink into eternal hell, without throwing them the rope of grace? If so, why would you worship such a being? If John Ridd had fallen into the bog, rather than Carver, Carver would not have pulled him out. (To know this about Carver’s moral character, you have to know the story.) If we think John Ridd has greater moral virtue than does Carver Doone, then why would we worship a being who is more like Carver Doone than like John Ridd?
In the peace of Christ,
- Bryan
How could he hold the rope…..being without strength?
How could he see the rope…..being without sight?
How could he position himself near the rope…..being deaf?
How could he prevail….being dead?
Man doesn’t need a rope to grab on to…..He needs a net to grab him….”Such is the Kingdom of God”
God’s Peace
Randy
Being a lifelong Presbyterian I have wrestled with Calvin’s views on Election much of my adult life. I recently spent some time reading our denominations Book Of Confessions and now understand its position on this question to parallel those of Rev. Most — a view which I understand preserves man’s free will and which I now find very satisfying. wdm
“Dead in your trespasses and sins” is a metaphor, not literal. The sstandard question, “How could a dead man do anything?” is sorely mistaken. In fact, the “dead” are able to do many things. The question of the transaction by which grace is applied to each individual who comes to Christ is not the subject of Eph. 2. The subject is the saving of the Gentiles (who were far off) and the Jews (who were near) into one new man. True, this salvation applies individually. But that is not Paul’s point here. At first, it would appear that either universal atonement or limited atonement can be read into the text (contrary to John’s Epistles where context demands all means all).
Here, Calvin runs into trouble. For if Christ atoned for (at least some) Jews and Gentiles, and grace is irresistable, how did (and do) many Jews and Gentiles resist the gospel when first they hear it, or second they hear it, or third they hear it before getting saved? Does grace “fail” (as Calvinists oft say regarding limited atonement) over and over until God ceases to resist applying it? How can God resis his application of his atoning work if it is, by its very nature, effectual? If God can resist application of his own grace to others, why would one assume fallen men (made in his image) are unable to resist it?
Paul, having seen Christ, and so, had revealed to him that he is Lord (and it seems Paul makes mental assent to it at that time, and waiting in sincere prayer), does not even count himself saved until his sins were washed away in baptism. How does he manage that?
Hmm. Calvin’s “logic” is fishy. As with certain early Christian doctrines, Calvin sees what he wants to see, specifically what is in agreement with the beliefs that seem to make sense to him. Of course, we all do that, and he, like us, with a bit of gamesmanship. We wink at contradiction and appeal to “mystery” instead of intellegent faith when things don’t seem in our favor.
In my humble opinion, all objections to God’s election/reprobation from the massa perditionis have lost sight of the biblical testimony regarding that “lump” out of which God fashions both kinds of vessels (R0.9:21). This overlooked testimony is that although God created man “very good” (Gen.1:31), fallen man is described by God not too long thence as being such that “ALL the thoughts and intents of his heart are ONLY evil CONTINUALLY….from his youth up.” (Gen.6:5; 8:21; cf. Ps.51:5; 58:3f; Eph.2:3; Ro.3:12). Moreover, fallen mankind is corporately CONDEMNED (Gr. katakrima) for Adam’s sin before they are even born (Ro.5:18). If the interpreter of Scripture begins at this beginning of fallen man’s actual ontological and juridical standing before God, he can no more credibly object to God’s reprobation of some justly condemned sinners than he could to the punishment of an actually guilty convicted murderer. No one is condemned for not being elect, but solely for their sins (personal and Original). If you can bring yourself to say that all men are justly condemned in Adam, then your objections to reprobation will vanish (cf. Ac. 13:48; 1Cor 1:26-31). Finally consider that every argument brought against what is perhaps regrettably called the Calvinistic understanding of election is designed to prove the postulate that God’s election
“IS according to the man who wills.” (cp. Ro.9:18).
Robert
Former Roman Catholic and current seminarian a Reformed seminary.
PS. With respect to the question of whether God is the author of sin if he in fact “ordains whatsoever comes to pass,” (Westminster Confession of Faith, III.i), or as Paul puts it, “works all things according to the counsel of his will,” (Eph.1:11), I offer for your consideration the argument that thought God brings all things to pass, including what is regarded as sin on the part of secondary causes, he is not responsible for the sinful aspects of the event. Our holy God as a primary cause and sinful men and devils as secondary causes will the same events, but for different reasons/motives: God’s reasons being just and salutary for bringing about the event, the reasons/motives of men and demons being evil the sin for performing the act of the event is regarded as sin. God wills the event, but not the sin tied up in the event, which comes from the secondary causes only. Consider the following passages from Scripture:
(1) God wills the event of Joseph’s being sold into slavery by his brothers for good motives, while it is the will of the brothers in bringing about the event that was malicious and “evil:” “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive[.]” Gen. 50:20 (cf. Gen. 45:5, 7).
(2) Herod, Pilate, the Jews, and the Gentiles conspired together to murder our incarnate God, the greatest crime ever committed, for wholly wicked motives, but the event was also willed by God for the salvation of all who would believe (Ac. 2:23; 4:27f).
(3) God condemns and punishes the Assyrians though it was merely an axe in his own hand against his faithless covenant people (Isa. 10:15-16), and he does so, even though they were performing Yahweh’s will unwittingly, because “he [,the Assyrian,] does not so intend, and his heart does not so think, but it is in his heart to destroy, and to cut off nations not a few…” (10:7).
God employs the fallen nature of wicked men and devils in the same manner in which the skillful Engineer channels water, whose nature is to seek the lowest point, for his own ends, and in so doing does not offend the nature of that water, but in his wisdom uses it. When God seeks for good reasons to cut a jagged edge, he reaches for a crooked instrument, and the rough edge is due to the crookedness of the instrument, and the salutary end is credited to the wisdom of the Craftsman.
Finally, please consider that the “freedom to do the contrary” as the only legitimate principle for preserving man’s moral responsibility is a principle that preserves the blameworthiness of man to the degree that it undermines the praiseworthiness of God, for if God is praiseworthy for being by nature and of necessity holy and righteous and truthful (for he “CANNOT lie”, Ti.1:2; Heb.6:18), then fallen men (and devils, see Jn. 8:44 in NASB) are likewise blameworthy for being by nature and of necessity sinful and wicked. For a fuller discussion of this line of argument, please see part II of my paper, “Select Questions on the Doctrine of Predestination of Thomas Aquinas,” at academia.edu.
Warm regards in Christ,
Robert
Robert’s last point does not seem to be a fair reading of Thomas with regard to divine free will and His ability to sin:
Prima Pars, Q. 19
Article 10. Whether God has free-will?
Objection 1. It seems that God has not free-will. For Jerome says, in a homily on the prodigal son [Ep. 146, ad Damas.]; “God alone is He who is not liable to sin, nor can be liable: all others, as having free-will, can be inclined to either side.”
Objection 2. Further, free-will is the faculty of the reason and will, by which good and evil are chosen. But God does not will evil, as has been said (9). Therefore there is not free-will in God.
On the contrary, Ambrose says (De Fide ii, 3): “The Holy Spirit divideth unto each one as He will, namely, according to the free choice of the will, not in obedience to necessity.”
I answer that, We have free-will with respect to what we will not of necessity, nor by natural instinct. For our will to be happy does not appertain to free-will, but to natural instinct. Hence other animals, that are moved to act by natural instinct, are not said to be moved by free-will. Since then God necessarily wills His own goodness, but other things not necessarily, as shown above (Article 3), He has free will with respect to what He does not necessarily will.
Reply to Objection 1. Jerome seems to deny free-will to God not simply, but only as regards the inclination to sin.
Reply to Objection 2. Since the evil of sin consists in turning away from the divine goodness, by which God wills all things, as above shown (De Fide ii, 3), it is manifestly impossible for Him to will the evil of sin; yet He can make choice of one of two opposites, inasmuch as He can will a thing to be, or not to be. In the same way we ourselves, without sin, can will to sit down, and not will to sit down.
Looking forward to clarification.
1. Whereas John Calvin taught “double predestination,” Aquinas taught “passive reprobation.”
2. Whereas John Calvin simply says reprobation is “just,” Aquinas uses the word “goodness.”
3. It will not do to say that with Aquinas, God’s grace simply “enables” a person to respond, for in Aquinas’s theology, this “response” (man’s “part” or “co-operation”) is an effect of God’s “infallible” grace (as he puts it) and is considered a part of this grace. God does not give grace for man to either respond or not respond. For Aquinas, God’s gives the kind if efficacious grace that is inclusive of (not just preceding in time) man’s free will response. In other words, in Aquinas God’s grace is inclusive of free will, not a coercion or violation of it.
4. Furthermore, it is most helpful to remember that Aquinas says that God loves some more than others because God’s love is nothing more than his willing good for that person. Aquinas therefore concludes that if there be anyone who possess some greater good (regardless of whether this is conceived as man’s response, his free will response, or his merit, or his eternal happiness, etc.) it is because God loves them more. This is what he says.
If you challenge me on this, I will gladly quote from the Summa. If we are going to discuss what Aquinas taught (not what amendments someone else made to his teaching) we cannot cherry-pick from his teachings, but must give his theology the clarification he himself gave it (that is, if we are to stay faithful to the discussion at hand—namely, John Calvin vs. Thomas Aquinas).
In light of all that, I find Thomas to be even more appealing than Calvin on this, and more grace centered, and more thoroughly defending what Calvinists tend to deem as most important. To make this point, I even say that Aquinas is a better Calvinist that John Calvin.
For these reasons, I don’t think Aquinas would find the amendments made by Rev. William’s amendment “compelling.”
If Aquinas’s views are acceptable to the Catholic Tradition, this removes a *huge* stumbling block for Calvinists (although obviously Aquinas was not a “five pointer”).
Pax,
Bradley
Salutations, all.
Since this thread has been graciously revitalized, I’ll join in. It seems weird to reply to years-old posts, but Barrett (#7) and Robert (#31) will be interested to know that the Council of Trent says (I think, as a Reformed Protestant 22-year old interpreting the council’s documents on a Catholic apologetics website – surely not what the drafters had in mind) in its Fifth Session on Original Sin the following regarding Adam’s sin and our subsequent guilt:
1. If any one does not confess that the first man, Adam, when he had transgressed the commandment of God in Paradise, immediately lost the holiness and justice wherein he had been constituted; and that he incurred, through the offence of that prevarication, the wrath and indignation of God, and consequently death, with which God had previously threatened him, and, together with death, captivity under his power who thenceforth had the empire of death, that is to say, the devil, and that the entire Adam, through that offence of prevarication, was changed, in body and soul, for the worse; let him be anathema.
2. If any one asserts, that the prevarication of Adam injured himself alone, and not his posterity; and that the holiness and justice, received of God, which he lost, he lost for himself alone, and not for us also; or that he, being defiled by the sin of disobedience, has only transfused death, and pains of the body, into the whole human race, but not sin also, which is the death of the soul; let him be anathema:–whereas he contradicts the apostle who says; By one man sin entered into the world, and by sin death, and so death passed upon all men, in whom all have sinned.
3. If any one asserts, that this sin of Adam,–which in its origin is one, and being transfused into all by propagation, not by imitation, is in each one as his own, –is taken away either by the powers of human nature, or by any other remedy than the merit of the one mediator, our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath reconciled us to God in his own blood, made unto us justice, sanctification, and redemption; or if he denies that the said merit of Jesus Christ is applied, both to adults and to infants, by the sacrament of baptism rightly administered in the form of the church; let him be anathema: For there is no other name under heaven given to men, whereby we must be saved. Whence that voice; Behold the lamb of God behold him who taketh away the sins of the world; and that other; As many as have been baptized, have put on Christ.
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It seems that, according to Trent, we are justly condemned in Adam, since his sin “which in its origin is one, and being transfused into all by propagation, not by imitation, is in each one as his own.” The language of free will and death, mixed here and in the famous Sixth Session on Justification following, is a perplexing case, to me, and perhaps better-discussed elsewhere. Now, this sin from Adam “which is the death of the soul” (probably) justifies the reprobation of all men apart from any of their individual sins, per Robert #31 and the Bible, but raises the eye-rubbing question of why God elects some to salvation and not others (whether electing them to damnation or simply passing over them, I confess I know not). You know what? The whole thing is just wild, isn’t it? So, I’m going to now attempt an amateur’s public reading of Aquinas to see what he says.
I admit that Aquinas quickly becomes slippery to my mean intellect in Section 1, Question 23, Articles 2 and 3 on the subjects of predestination (active in the Divine Mind and passive in the subject) and reprobation (not predestining to eternal life). But Aquinas explodes into my unknowable in these and the following articles where he distinguishes between necessity and contingency in providence (fully elaborated in Section 1, Question 22) which is sure to come about regardless of it being a necessary or contingent, being, after all, providence. Predestination to salvation and reprobation are called contingent, preserving the action of the free will of man and thereby his responsibility in (at least) his reprobation (1.23.6.answer). In 1.23.5.reply 3, Aquinas addresses the Potter analogy Robert brought up and places the reason for making some pots honorable and some dishonorable safely and pleasantly (and thankfully) within the hidden Divine Will. But with his claim of the contingency of this providential decree (thereby infallible) of predestination, Aquinas manages to place the guilt associated with reprobation squarely within the guilty, exactly as Robert stated in #31, while avoiding the stomachache I sometimes get from Calvin.
1.23.3.reply 3: Reprobation by God does not take anything away from the power of the person reprobated. Hence, when it is said that the reprobated cannot obtain grace, this must not be understood as implying absolute impossibility: but only conditional impossibility: as was said above (Question 19, Article 3), that the predestined must necessarily be saved; yet a conditional necessity, which does not do away with the liberty of choice. Whence, although anyone reprobated by God cannot acquire grace, nevertheless that he falls into this or that particular sin comes from the use of his free-will. Hence it is rightly imputed to him as guilt.
1.23.5.reply 3 (Potter portion from Romans above in this reply): Neither on this account can there be said to be injustice in God, if He prepares unequal lots for not unequal things. This would be altogether contrary to the notion of justice, if the effect of predestination were granted as a debt, and not gratuitously. In things which are given gratuitously, a person can give more or less, just as he pleases (provided he deprives nobody of his due), without any infringement of justice. This is what the master of the house said: “Take what is thine, and go thy way. Is it not lawful for me to do what I will?” (Matthew 20:14-15).
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Angelic Doctor, indeed. I love this guy! To my humble sensibilities, Aquinas is preferable to Calvin in that he’s just nicer in his descriptions of hard but Biblical truths that are probably better termed mysteries. Too, even if just with wordplay (that’s all I can offer up about these deep subjects, at least), he avoids nailing God with (what I am going to poorly phrase) actively predestining the reprobate to hell by appealing to the contingent nature of albeit-infallible providence hidden in the will of God. An infallible providence that is contingent upon the free will (though “there is no distinction between what flows from free will, and what is of predestination” 1.23.5.answer) of a non-providence-defining individual is a doozy, but we’ll go with it.
For me, the theological rubber really meets the cerebral road with how Aquinas’ sufficient/efficient grace distinction (which has been well-addressed above, thank you) is to be viewed in light of the atonement. It seems that I can be within Bryan’s boundaries in #5 and believe in an effectively limited atonement, which I know has been discussed elsewhere at great length. I know that Aquinas neither espouses this view nor penal substitution that closely accompanies it (3.48.2), though I can’t for the life of me figure out why, when he’s got all (pretty much) of the preceding pieces of a “Reformed” soteriology leading up to these high views, he doesn’t hold them – unless, of course, they aren’t in the Tradition. Wink. Nudge. Let me know if I’m misreading anyone in the last 2000 years, here. If someone cares to comment on this rambly mess – any of it, at all – please do. I wanted to put my thinking out there and finally brave-up enough to comment here after many moons of reading and heavy shoulders. I also need to learn how to format my posts.
So, semper idem, do I hand my Calvinist cloak to this welcoming doorman of Catholicism named Thomas, beckoning me come join in with the fair doctrines of the sacraments, the reverent liturgy I so appreciate, and a (decently) coherent history? Time will tell, of course, but in the mean time, I’ve got no excuse not to work. Thanks, and keep it up.
Peace and hope.
Drew Avery
Thanks for your post, Bradley. I want to state clearly that Aquinas’ views are acceptable to Catholic tradition (without Rev. Most’s emendations). The Congruists–some of whom were instrumental in writing the influential Old Catholic Encyclopedia–sometimes suggested that Thomist or Banezian views were somehow dangerous. But even as views more-or-less close to the Thomists were condemned (like Jansenism), the orthodoxy of Thomism was affirmed by the papacy.
Furthermore, the closeness of Thomism and the Reformed tradition on predestination and reprobation is not invented by modern ecumenists. I can point to a number of eighteenth-century Dominicans who appreciated the Gomarist position in the Synod of Dordt! They didn’t like Calvin’s position, but they thought (rightly or wrongly) that later Reformed theologians had embraced key concepts (like necessity of consequent vs. necessity of the consequence, composed and divided sense, etc.) which Calvin had rejected to his peril. OK, I should stop–thanks!
Bradley,
While we can speculate whether or not St. Thomas would have been compelled personally by Rev. William’s amendments, we can know that St. Thomas would have hoped that in the spirit of his theology/philosophy, there would be development that would benefit from further contemplation of divine Truth. Thomism is marked by its openness to development and correction. In this way, one can affirm an amendment as being within the Thomistic tradition without affirming that St. Thomas, in his life, would have affirmed it.
Does that distinction make sense? (It’s something I learned while taking a class on Scholastic Tradition from Dr. Philipp Rosemann at the University of Dallas). Another example of this would be the counter-intuitiveness of the 24 Thomistic thesis. : )
@Matthew,
Thanks for the encouragement. I find Aquinas to be an exemplary “both and” theologian that characterizes the Catholic Tradition (see my post on this at my blog).
@Brent,
I don’t think of it as mere “speculation,” since Aquinas is exceptionally perspicuous.
Your distinction makes all the sense in the world. But the title of the post was “Aquinas vs. Calvin” not “Amendments to Aquinas’s Doctrine of Predestination.” Aquinas would have prayed “Lord let whatever I write that is in error be surpassed and amended, but whatever is Truth be apprehended and cherished.”
As Aquinas might have said, the Thomistic Tradition can be considered in two ways. First, as that which adheres to Thomas’s intention in some particular question. In this sense, the Thomistic Tradition can be considered as adherence to whatever Thomas taught on some particular question. And in this sense, as Aquinas says, “God loves some more than others.” In another sense, however, the Thomistic Tradition can be considered as in some way consistent with the spirit of Thomas’s intension. In this sense, we might disagree with Aquinas in some particular, but only in a way that seems consistent with what he taught or exemplified on some other particular.
Pax,
Bradley
Bradley,
Agreed about the two senses of Thomism and also that he is very perspicuous. He led me out of the epistemological shadows, so to speak! After I typed my comment and pressed submit, I thought about the sense of Thomism you were getting at which was the premise of the article and thought, “Oops”.
And to your point, I know many Calvin scholars (I was trained by one) who argue the TULIP is a plant that he never planted which would speak to the two-senses of Calvinism–autographic and developmental-and would apply to St. Thomas as well. (Distinguish to unite!)
Thanks for your charity.
Doctor Communis, pray for us!
Bryan Cross (reply to comment #5),
A quick couple questions concerning something you wrote concerning various positions that can be held within the Church on the nature of predestination, free will, hell, etc.
You wrote:
I’ve heard and read from such people as Fr. Barron (Word on Fire) that the Church has not declared that anyone is in hell. This could lead one to the notion that there is a possibility that all human beings make it to heaven. In fact, we pray that God would lead all souls to heaven when praying the rosary, especially when it comes to those that are in most need of God’s mercy.
But at the same time, hell is a real possibility for human beings. In other words, we cannot presume upon the mercy of God and act as if we know that everyone makes it to heaven. Here is Fr. Barron’s video in which he explains this position, which he claims is in line with Catholic theologian, Hans Urs von Balthasar, as well as the Church in general.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmsa0sg4Od4
Wouldn’t this position be contrary to the notion that the Church teaches that some are predestined to hell? If the Church has not declared that anyone is in hell, how can the Church claim that some are predestined to hell?
I understand that probably many Calvinists would be very uneasy with Fr. Barron’s position, but is his position allowable within the Church?
Thanks for all the work you do in service to our Lord.
Blessings,
Brian M
Brian, (re: #40)
Thanks for your question, which is a good one. I’ve been at a conference the last four days, and haven’t had a chance to reply. It is true that the Church has not declared that any particular person is in hell, although some early statements seem to imply that Judas was not saved. And it is true that we may pray and hope for the salvation of any particular person, because the state of his soul at the moment of his death is hidden to us. (I’m not speaking of those whom the Church has beatified — in those cases we know the state of their soul at death, not by seeing into their soul, but by way of the declaration of the Church.) Also, I have deep respect, admiration and even affection for Fr. Barron, for his work, and for the gifts he brings to the Church, and the ministry God has given him. I think of him as our generation’s Bishop Sheen. In my mind, he is a tremendous gift to the Church, and I strongly support him and his ministry. I pray that God continues to bless him and his work. So, please keep that in mind. On this particular question, however, I respectfully disagree with him (and I am not presuming to speak for anyone else at CTC; I’m speaking only for myself, and I’m open to correction from the Magisterium.)
That we may hope for the salvation of any particular person, even one who has died, does not mean that we have reason to hope that hell will have no human population, given the Tradition of the Church found in the unanimous testimony of the Church Fathers concerning the teaching of our Lord on this subject, revealed in the New Testament, and especially in the Gospels. Concerning the interpretation of Scripture, I have in mind the relevant decree in the Fourth Council of Trent:
There are many relevant passages from Scripture. Jesus said “the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it.” (Matt 7:13). When the Apostles asked Jesus, “Lord, will those who are saved be few?” He answered “Strive to enter through the narrow door; for many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able.” (Lk. 13:24), and “Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’ “And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you who practice lawlessness.” (Mt 7:22-23) “But the sons of the kingdom will be cast out into the outer darkness; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” (Mt 8:12) “These shall go into everlasting punishment.” (Mt. 25:46) In the context of the parable of the wedding guest who seeks to enter without the proper garment, Jesus says, “Many are called, but few are chosen.” (Matt. 22:14) And in explaining the parable of the wheat and the tares, Jesus explains that the tares are the “sons of the evil one,” and then says, “So just as the tares are gathered up and burned with fire, so shall it be at the end of the age.” (Matt. 13:40) The parable wouldn’t make sense if every person goes to heaven, especially since the “sons of the evil one” cannot be referring to believers who are in need of purgatorial cleansing. And Jesus says, “The hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear [the Father’s] voice and come forth, those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of judgment.” (John 5:28-29) Jesus’ statement wouldn’t be true if everyone was saved, because there would then be no “resurrection of judgment.” The Apostle John writes, “As for the cowardly, the faithless, the polluted, as for murderers, fornicators, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their lot shall be the lake that burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.” (Revelation 21:8)
And the Church Fathers unanimously understood these passages in the traditional way, as teaching that some persons do go to hell. In my study of the Church Fathers, I have not found any Church Father who denies that these passages mean that some human persons go to hell, or who interprets these passages in such a way as meaning that no one goes to hell. On that particular question (whether Christ taught that some persons go to hell) we have a unanimous interpretive tradition in the Church Fathers, and that gives it a certain weight of authority.
I should mention here the notion of universal restoration (apokatastasis [from ἀποκαταστάσεως πάντων "restoration of all things" in Acts 3:21]), which was the opinion by some Greek Fathers not that no one would go to hell, but that eventually those in hell would be reconciled to God. We see this in Origen (not a Church Father), and in certain qualified respects in Gregory of Nyssa and Gregory Nazianzen. Origen’s proposed universal restoration was not that no one would go to hell, but that the damned in hell, and the demons would eventually return to God. In the sixth century Pope Vigilius condemned the notion that the punishment of hell is temporary:
If he anathematizes those who deny that the punishment of impious men in hell is everlasting, how could he not also anathematize the notion that possibly in the end, there are no impious men? It would seem arbitrary to condemn the notion that eventually every man who goes to hell gets out of hell, while embracing the notion that possibly no human ever goes to hell on account of a posited possible efficacious [cannot ultimately be successfully perpetually resisted] divine work in the soul of every man in mortal sin, at the moment of death. Practically, they amount to the same, except the hopeful universalism position actually makes hell even less of worry or negative incentive, since if it were true, no man ever even goes to hell, whereas in the Origenistic notion, those who die in mortal sin suffer greatly in hell, before finally being released from hell.
Since that time (i.e. the sixth century), the question whether hell is everlasting or only temporary has been settled in the Catholic Church. Once a person is in hell, he cannot ever come out of hell. He has for eternity separated himself from God by his free choice during this life. (See my “The Gospel and the Meaning of Life.”) In fact, the person who dies in mortal sin immediately goes to hell. In the fourteenth century Pope Benedict XII wrote:
This statement presupposes that there are such souls who die in mortal sin; it is implicit in the very statement. Pope Benedict XII does not need to state that some people go to hell, because it was understood that some people go to hell. Here, he is answering questions concerning what takes place between the moment of death and the Final Judgment, for those who die in mortal sin.
But, it is important to note that the fact that some fourth century Eastern Fathers held to the notion of apokatastasis is fully compatible with what I said above about the unanimous consensus of the Church Fathers regarding the teaching of our Lord that some people do go to hell, because the apokatastatis dispute was about whether persons who are already in hell eventually get out of hell, not whether no human ever goes to hell. The latter was never in dispute, because it was understood to be part of the Apostolic teaching and the universal belief of the Church.
Two councils are relevant here as well. They are not ecumenical councils, but they reveal the mind of the Church in relation to this question. The first is the Council of Quiersy, held in AD 853, which taught:
Two years later, in AD 855, the third Council of Valence taught:
The last statement of that canon refers to the statement of the Second Council of Orange (AD 529), which anathematizes the notion that some persons are predestined to evil by divine power. What was in dispute (and being addressed by the Second Council of Orange) was not whether some persons are reprobated, but whether they are so by divine power, or by their own evil choices. That particular statement (by the Council of Orange) would make no sense if no one was reprobate. Again, the Second Council of Orange was not an ecumenical council, but it was confirmed by Pope Felix II, and reveals the mind of the Church on this doctrine at this time in Church history. The Council of Valence in AD 855 is in continuity with the Council of Orange regarding both the fact of reprobation, and the nature of reprobation. That some are reprobate (though not by divine power) has been the general teaching of the universal Church from the beginning of the Church until it began to be contested in the twentieth century. And that consensus carries a certain doctrinal weight, because of the authority of Tradition.
This obligation to Tradition is fundamental to the Catholic theological method, as opposed to typical Protestant approaches to Scripture, where Tradition is subjected to our own interpretation of Scripture, and we take from Tradition only what passes that test. That method undermines the authority of Tradition. But the authority of Tradition is itself part of the Catholic Tradition, because the book and the community to which it was entrusted and the spiritual life, practice and understanding of that diachronic, organic community can never be separated; the community can never be abstracted from its past, but is always beholden to its past, in order to understand and develop rightly what it has received from all those who preceded. (See Verbum Domini.)
Tradition, even in matters that have not been formally defined, has authoritative weight. Otherwise for any theological question that had not been formally defined, we would not be able to distinguish genuine development from corruption and liberalism (i.e. a departure from Tradition). To make that distinction we not only need to be steeped in the Tradition but also reverently be subject to that Tradition. It is crucial especially for anyone who teaches Catholic theology to be able accurately and in a principled way to distinguish between what is theological liberalism and what is authentic, orthodox theological development.
Balthasar, in my opinion, incorrectly treats the authentic developments of Vatican II as a warrant for rejecting the Tradition regarding hell having a human population. The authentic developments of Vatican II do not justify or give reason to believe that the Tradition’s teaching that some humans go to hell is false, or that such teaching was never part of the Tradition.
Moreover, the consequences of ‘hopeful universalism’ are, in my opinion, devastating, because it undermines evangelism, sacrifice for the lost, the gravity of mortal sin, and the importance of always remaining in a state of grace. It reduces practically to a kind of monergism, as when Balthasar writes:
In effect, this is, like Calvinism, a denial of the resistibility of grace, and thereby a denial of the probationary nature of our present time on earth, and the meaningfulness of our present choices (again, see “The Gospel and the Meaning of Life“). That is because Balthasar’s claim proposes that before each person dies, God will find a way to overwhelm that person with [essentially] irresistible grace, such that it is “infinitely improbable” that any human who has ever lived or ever will live, ends up in hell. In that respect, it is Calvinism except without limited atonement.
Pope Clement XI condemned the following Jansenist error: “All whom God wishes to save through Christ, are infallibly saved.” (Denz. 1380) That wouldn’t be an error if universalism were true, given the Catholic doctrine that God wishes all men without exception to be saved.
Because Christ’s teaching (recorded in Sacred Scripture) regarding hell has been understood unanimously by the Fathers, by the local councils, and by all faithful Catholics until the middle of the twentieth century to be teaching that some humans will not be saved, therefore the teaching that some are in hell carries an authoritative weight, the weight of the Tradition. In my opinion, no good evidence or argument has been provided by those who reject this teaching (i.e. that some humans are in hell), to show that it is not part of the Tradition. What is needed (by those advocating hopeful universalism) is an answer to the following question: If hopeful universalism were an inauthentic development that in fact contradicted the Tradition, what would be different?
So, even though we cannot now know who is in hell, it does not follow that we have reason to hope that hell will have no human population, or that no one is reprobate. Likewise, our awareness that God desires all men to be saved does not justify hoping that all men will be saved, because the revelation cited above shows that His antecedent will and His consequent will are not identical, and therefore what is contrary to His revealed consequent will cannot be treated as an object of hope. Yes there has never been a single person conceived whom God does not will to be saved, but that claim in itself does not distinguish between God’s antecedent and consequent will, and so does not show that we have good reason to hope that all men will be saved.
Also, the Catechism’s statement, “In hope, the Church prays for ‘all men to be saved” (1 Tim 2:4) does not support “hopeful universalism,” because the prayer of the Church is not (and has never been) that hell would be empty of humans, but rather that each person who may yet repent will do so and be saved. Praying that each person who may yet repent will do so is very different from praying that hell will be empty. The former prayer is not equivalent to the latter prayer, nor does the former prayer logically justify the latter prayer or the doctrine implicit in the latter prayer. Hoping that no particular person goes to hell is not the same thing as hoping that hell remains permanently devoid of humans. And this is the same way to understand the prayer of the Rosary “lead all souls to heaven, especially those most in need of thy mercy.” The prayer is not an endorsement of “hopeful universalism,” because the persons to whom it refers are only those who may yet repent, not those who have already died and gone to hell.
Except, perhaps in the case of Judas, the Church has never taught that some particular person has gone to hell. So for any particular person (again, except, perhaps, in the case of Judas) we may pray and hope that that person goes to heaven. But the longstanding and authoritative Tradition of the Church in her understanding of the teaching of our Lord in Sacred Scripture, has been that some persons go to hell. And therefore, hoping that hell will contain no humans denies what Jesus taught about hell, as interpreted by the Church for nineteen centuries. We don’t have to adopt hopeful universalism in order to pray for the salvation of every person who may yet repent and the purification of every person presently in purgatory. Nor does praying for the salvation of each person who has died provide evidence that hell may be or remain perpetually devoid of humans. Nor does anything in the teaching of Vatican II entail that the traditional teaching that some humans will go to hell, is false, or could be false.
So, when I wrote that the Church teaches that “some are predestined to hell, on the basis of their foreseen sin and free rejection of God, as just retribution for their sin” I was referring to the Tradition of the Church, as seen in the evidence above. This doctrine has not been formally defined, but it has authoritative weight none the less (for the reasons I have explained), and Balthasar’s arguments against it are not good arguments. And so for these reasons I think Balthasar was in error on this point. I hope that helps answer your question.
In the peace of Christ,
- Bryan
[...] [...]
Just out of curiosity, is there anything actually in Scripture, in the indicative mood, that would justify the notion that the will of man is something that may not be “violated,” whatever that means?
Interesting, and ubiquitous, word choice for this context.
Robert
Father Ryan Erlenbush makes a similar case today to the one I presented in comment #41 above. See his “Can we hope that all men be saved?.” [See also Monsignor Pope's comments.]
hey y’all
Don’t overlook the texts in chapters 2 and 4 of Acts. The most heinous, wicked, sinful acts by humanity were perpetrated against the Lamb of God, Yeshua HaMashiach, according to YHWH’s immutable, determinate counsel of His good pleasured will from the foundation of the world. Isn’t it awesome that our Sovereign God determined that when humankind would be at its evil worst, Almighty Yah would be at His righteous best!
YaHWeH’s plan of salvation will accomplish “exactly” everything He determined it will, and He will be 100% successful in saving ALL (of every race and rank) that “HE CHOSE” to save!
For He is long suffering towards “US” (His beloved, elect children of the PROMISE of promises), not willing that any (of “us”) perish, but that all (of “us”) will come to repentance! In spite of “SOME” other ungodly, scoffing mens’ chiding – who shall be justly damned by GOD.
The T-U-L-I-P is beautiful in its strong, SOUND, peaceful, GRACE.
Those who hold to the doctrines of Arminianism will have to admit that they believe it is what man “rightly does” according to his so-called “free will” (independent of YHWH’s sovereignty) that ACTUALLY saves himself, and that it is not what Christ did. This is SELF RIGHTEOUSNESS – “I done a good thing!”
They have to make man the “savior” to be consistent with their other doctrine ( GOD wants each and every person to be saved), in order to be able to blame man for any failure.
God did not try to make it easier for man to save himself by reducing the Ten Commandments to obedience to one – “obey the gospel.” Our obedience to the gospel is a RESULT of the regenerative, miracle working power of the Holy Spirit, not the CAUSE of it. He supernaturally delivers “us” out of Satan’s house of BONDAGE (read Luther’s – “The Bondage of the Will”). His resurrection power raises “us” from spiritual death, opens our blind eyes, unstops our deaf ears, enlightens our dark minds, creates a “new heart” within “us” and a new creature born of incorruptible Seed which WILL love and obey the TRUTH.
This is the “FREED WILL” of man, and it is FREE indeed!
Does GOD the Father “fail” to save ALL whom He determined to save?
Does GOD the Son “fail” to atone for ALL for whom He shed His blood and died?
Does GOD the Holy Spirit “fail” to unite ALL for whom Christ died to their Savior?
If you hold to the ERROR of Arminianism (semi-Pelagianism), you will have to answer, “YES!”
Almighty Yah is NOT an impotent, foolish failure! Those are the attributes of a “false” god.
“We” love GOD because He first loved “us”.
“We” seek HIM because He first sought “us”.
“We” choose Him because He first chose “us”
“We” receive Christ because He first received “us”
You shall call His name Yeshua (Savior), for He SHALL SAVE HIS PEOPLE from their sins! (not maybe will)
GOD the Father gave Jesus power over ALL FLESH to give eternal life to as many as He “had given” to His Son. (John 17)
Who are the “believers” that John 3:16 AND 17 refer to? “…and as many as were (had been – past tense) ordained (appointed, determined, predestined) to eternal life, “believed”.
GOD’s LOVE for His Elect children from the foundation of the world is why He chose to save “us” and is what distinguishes “us” from the reprobate (vessels of wrath). He “KNEW” us intimately as the objects of His love be”FORE” the world was – FOREKNOWLEDGE.
To the unrepentant workers of iniquity, which He hates, he declares “….depart from Me, … I never “KNEW” you!”
love, GRACE, peace,
___paul (a GOD saved sinner)
Hey Bradley #34,
I am not a Calvinist, but I believe that Calvin and other Reformers are not as bad as they are often made out to be, and are, in fact, in general accordance with the teachings of St. Augustine and St. Aquinas.
Point #1. “Whereas John Calvin taught “double predestination,” Aquinas taught “passive reprobation.”’
Aquinas says that:
“…reprobation implies not only foreknowledge, but also something more…Therefore, as predestination includes the will to confer grace and glory; so also reprobation includes the WILL to permit a person to fall into sin, and to impose the punishment of damnation on account of that sin.” (see Question 23, Article 3 of Summa Theologica)
Aquinas affirms thereafter that “anyone reprobated by God cannot acquire grace” (even in the context of affirming free-will). (see Question 23, Article 3 of Summa Theologica)
Although Aquinas doesn’t use the same language as the reformers, Aquinas’ reference to the active “willing” of reprobation is not clearly distinguishable from the Calvinist definitions, such as “ordain[ing]…dishonor and wrath” to the reprobate “for their sin.” Westminister Confession:
“By the decree of God, for the manifestation of His glory, some men and angels are predestinated unto everlasting life; and others foreordained to everlasting death (iii). The rest of mankind God was pleased, according to the unsearchable counsel of His will, whereby he extendeth or withholdeth mercy as he pleaseth, for the glory of His sovereign power over His creatures, to pass by; and to ordain them to dishonour and wrath for their sin, to the praise of His glorious justice (vii).”(Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter III, Articles iii and vii)
Point #2 This is not a point of disagreement between Calvin and Aquinas.
Point #3 “For Aquinas, God gives the kind of efficacious grace that is inclusive of (not just preceding in time) man’s free will response. In other words, in Aquinas God’s grace is inclusive of free will, not a coercion or violation of it.”
Aquinas’ position is completely compatible with the position of Calvin, who says “it is not violent, so as to compel men by external force; but still it is a powerful impulse of the Holy Spirit, which makes men willing who formerly were unwilling and reluctant” Commentary on John.
God Bless,
William Scott
William, (re: #46)
The divine will to permit a person to reject actual grace even unto death is based in part on the foreknowledge of that person’s free choice to reject actual grace even unto death. Hence St. Thomas explains that “Reprobation … is not the cause of what is in the present–namely, sin; but it is the cause of abandonment by God.” (ST I Q.23 a.3 ad2) The abandonment by God is not the cause of the sin; otherwise, divine reprobation would be the cause of the person’s present sin. Instead, the abandonment by God is the result of the perpetual free resistance of actual grace even unto death. Otherwise, if the person’s perpetual rejection of actual grace were caused fundamentally (and without foreknowledge) by God’s choice to withhold an additional grace from that person, such that the person could not but perpetually reject actual grace, the person could not be justly blamed for perpetually rejecting actual grace, since he could not possibly have done otherwise. Nor, in that case, could it be said that God truly desires all persons to be saved.
Also, when St. Thomas says that “anyone reprobated by God cannot acquire grace” we have to understand the ‘cannot’ properly. Here’s the statement in context:
When St. Thomas says that the reprobated cannot obtain grace, the sense of the ‘cannot’ is not that God withholds actual grace from the reprobated such that they cannot but sin. Rather they ‘cannot’ obtain sanctifying grace in the sense that God’s foreknowledge of their perpetual refusal of actual grace cannot be mistaken. The ‘cannot’ therefore is not an absolute impossibility, but a conditional impossibility, i.e. given their own perpetual rejection of the actual grace offered to them, it is impossible for them to obtain sanctifying grace and persevere in it till death. (On the distinction between actual grace and sanctifying grace, see here.)
This position differs essentially from that of Calvin who taught positive double predestination as explained above, and who denied that Christ died for the reprobate, and who denied that God offers sufficient actual grace to the reprobate, and who denied that grace is resistible, and who did not distinguish between actual grace and sanctifying grace.
So with regard to point #2 (i.e. whether reprobation is just or good), St. Thomas and Calvin do not mean that same thing by the term ‘reprobation,’ so the fact that they both believed that ‘reprobation’ is just or good does not show that St. Thomas thought that the Calvinistic doctrine of reprobation is just or good.
Regarding Bradley’s claim:
To the best of my knowledge, St. Thomas never uses the term or concept of efficacious grace. That’s a later development. But, yes, for St. Thomas, actual grace does not coerce or violate free will. This is why grace is resistible, because grace does not nullify free choice.
I recommend the following three lectures: “Lawrence Feingold on God’s Universal Salvific Will,” “Lawrence Feingold: A Catholic Understanding of Predestination and Perseverance,” and “Lawrence Feingold on Sufficient and Efficacious Grace.”
In the peace of Christ,
- Bryan
William (re: #46),
Thanks for the charitable comments. My two points were intended to list the two differences I can discern between Aquinas and Calvin in order that we might see how similar they are, not to emphasize their differences. In that vain I continue …
Again, I think Aquinas actually teaches what is most important to Calvinists, but captures these concerns even better than Calvin (or any subsequent Calvinist for that matter). Much (although not all) of the differences lie in the sophistication of philosophical strategy, choice of words and degrees of emphasis. For example, Bryan argues that Aquinas (to the best of his knowledge) never used the word or concept of “efficacious,” so he proposes that this is a later development. With all due respect to Bryan’s familiarity with Thomistic theology and his exceptional acumen on so much Catholic theology, I disagree with his reading of Aquinas on this point. The concept of efficacious grace goes all the way back to Augustine. Aquinas may not have used the word, but the concept is ably captured by his word “infallible” and consistently applied to saving grace in an Augustinian way (read: the way Calvin was doing his best to capture also, but Calvin’s self-imposed limitations resulted from his failure to dialogue faithfully with Catholic Tradition—that is, Augustine and Aquinas). The fact is that Augustine, Aquinas, and Calvin have a key perspective in common on the question of grace and predestination, a commonality that appears (from what I can tell) to be unpopular (even if technically “acceptable”) in modern Catholic theology.
Also, while Aquinas captures what I judge to be important in Calvin’s notion of reprobation, he does so with a different and more balanced emphasis. We might treat predestination and reprobation under the rubric of “double predestination” (as did Calvin) to highlight or emphasize what is similar between predestination and reprobation; both refer to persons and their inevitable destiny, which God wills in some way, whether passively or actively, whether by God’s “antecedent will” or “consequent will” (see link below on “Aquinas the Calvinist”). On the other hand, we might (as did Aquinas) separate these two doctrines and deny “double predestination” by teaching predestination on the one hand, and reprobation on the other in order to emphasize the relevant differences between God’s activity in each. God is passive in man’s continual rejection of Him, but in predestination God’s grace “infallibly” causes those who were predestined to repent and believe (in the latter case, it is not man’s will that is the decisive cause of genuine Christian faith and salvation, but God’s “infallible” grace).
When I say Aquinas believed that grace is inclusive of free will, I don’t simply mean that God doesn’t coerce people against their will (although that is implied), but also that Aquinas believes God’s grace decisively causes the ungodly to freely and salvifically will Him.
I find that whatever words I use to describe what I think is the right way to understand the way grace works, Aquinas’s language captures the distinctions I have in mind more deftly than I could’ve anticipated. His language, in other words, is more efficient, even if tedious to follow, since he is willing to explore so many different “senses” in which things might be true or untrue depending on the meaning we give to words and the larger theological/anthropological assumptions we are making to do our interpretive work in the case of a particular question. When asking, “Did Aquinas believe in Free Will?” for example, the answer is always something like “Yes and No,” with a long explanation that follows. Aquinas (for example) believed that a choice can be made out of necessity yet also be free. This is important for understanding how Aquinas can believe that once we possess the beatific vision of God, we cannot not habitually love him above all else. cf. Nicholas E. Lombardo, O.P., The Logic of Desire: Aquinas on Emotion (Washington D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2011), 81.
There is a calculated compatibility in Aquinas between certain types of necessity and what he takes to be the type of human freedom that makes us culpable for our decisions and actions. Thus, asking whether Aquinas believed in free will or whether God offers “sufficient” grace to the reprobate, etc., it may be misleading to simply put Calvin on one side as giving a “no,” and Aquinas giving the “yes.” But Aquinas would say humans are free and culpable, that they yet often choose out of different kinds of necessity, that God’s grace “infallibly” causes faith in the predestined, that “if God intends” grace to be accepted (rather than refused) it will happen “infallibly” (see above quote again), that God’s “consequent will” does not desire for all to be saved (see “Aquinas the Calvinist”), etc.
Aquinas’s “Calvinistic” way of viewing grace (and yes, I realize this is an anachronism) is also confirmed when I read his interpretations of certain passages of scripture that tend to be problematic for Calvinists (you know, the one’s about God’s willing to save everyone?). See “Aquinas the Calvinist”: http://theophilogue.com/2011/07/18/aquinas-the-calvinist-via-eastern-orthodoxy-how-could-it-be/
Pax,
Bradley
Bradley, (re: #48)
I agree that a concept of ‘efficacious grace’ can be found in St. Augustine. But St. Thomas did not restrict himself to St. Augustine’s theology of predestination. He was informed on this question by a number of other subsequent Christian thinkers and councils. He was not unaware that St. Augustine’s position on the subject was unique and novel, and that although St. Augustine himself did not teach double predestination, Gottschalk took St. Augustine in a way that did affirm double-predestination, and that Gottschalk’s position was condemned by the Church. As I pointed out in comment #8, that is one of the fundamental differences between St. Thomas and Calvin on this subject, namely, Calvin affirmed double-predestination, while St. Thomas did not. It is not a mere difference of ‘emphasis;’ it is a fundamental, essential difference, because Calvin’s position is heretical and St. Thomas’s is not (see comment #8).
Regarding “efficacious grace,” you wrote:
When St. Thomas uses the word ‘infallible’ in these contexts, he is not referring to a kind of grace that is irresistible in contrast to some other kind of grace that is resistible. In other words, he is not referring to an essential difference in the kind of grace given, nor an essentially different mode of causation on the part of the Spirit. Rather, he is referring to the settled and inviolable character of God’s providential plan. (cf. ST I Q.23 a.6) But this providential plan (of which predestination is a part, as St. Thomas explains in ST I Q.23 a.1) takes into account His foreknowledge of human free choices to resist grace or not to resist grace. And that’s why St. Thomas’s use of the term ‘infallible’ here does not entail or imply a Báñezian sense of ‘efficacious grace,’ or a Calvinistic sense of irresistible grace.
For St. Thomas, grace is resistible, and the cause of any man’s not having grace is his own resistance of grace. He explains this in Summa Contra Gentiles III 159-161:
Calvin could never have said such a thing, not only because he taught double-predestination, but because he denied that grace is resistible.
You referred to ST I-II Q.113 a.3. There St. Thomas writes:
In the context, St. Thomas is explaining that God moves each thing according to (i.e. in keep with) its nature. That’s why, although in baptism infants receive justifying grace without the use of their free will, in those who have attained the age of reason God does not infuse justifying grace without their free consent. This free consent is itself enabled by and a cooperation with the divine movement in them, but not entailed by the divine movement in them. That’s because God moves the rational creature not by coercing the creature’s will, but precisely while entirely upholding the genuine function and efficacy and integrity of the human will, i.e. preserving its power to choose freely between cooperation and resistance. That is why the notion that in justification the Holy Spirit moves the free creature [who has attained the age of reason] such that he cannot do otherwise, is exactly contrary to what St. Thomas is saying here.
You also included the following quotation from St. Thomas:
The sense of ‘chiefly’ here is not a matter of proportion or degree. St. Thomas is talking about the principle of the motion; actual grace is a divine motion having a divine origin and ordered to a supernatural end. Actual grace is not a natural motion, but a gratuitous supernatural motion in which the creature participates. The point of the term ‘chiefly’ is to rule out Pelagianism and Semi-Pelagianism, not to rule out a non-Báñezian sense of ‘efficacious grace,’ such that the actual operative grace becomes cooperative grace when the human freely chooses to cooperate with that grace. As Prof. Feingold explains here, one does not need to take a Báñezian sense of ‘efficacious grace’ in order to avoid Pelagianism and Semi-Pelagianism. The Church condemned as “false and heretical” the Jansenist claim that “The Semipelagians admitted the necessity of a prevenient interior grace for each act, even for the beginning of faith; and in this they were heretics, because they wished this grace to be such that the human will could either resist or obey.” (Denz. 1095) The problem with that statement is that it treats as false the notion that prevenient interior grace can be “either resisted or obeyed,” and instead treats prevenient interior grace as something that can only be obeyed.
Likewise, the way in which the Holy Spirit “causes the very movement of the will and of free choice” is, as explained above, a way that preserves the power of the will to choose freely between alternatives. That’s precisely how this causation is unlike the way the hand moves the staff. If God moved the human will the way the hand moved the staff, that would undermine the Thomistic principle that God moves a thing according to its nature, preserving its nature and powers, not hijacking these powers or temporarily subverting them to prevent their proper exercise.
The Council of Trent declared, “If anyone shall say that man’s free will moved and aroused by God does not cooperate by assenting to God who rouses and calls, whereby it disposes and prepares itself to obtain the grace of justification, and that it cannot dissent, if it wishes, but that like something inanimate it does nothing at all and is merely in a passive state: let him be anathema.” (Trent VI, can. 4)
You wrote:
The problem with that claim is that St. Thomas nowhere teaches that God’s grace decisively causes the ungodly to freely and salvifically will Him. The decisiveness is in God’s providential plan, not in the species of actual grace uniquely given only to the justified, or the mode of the Spirit’s action in the justified.
That’s misleading for a number of reasons. First, for St. Thomas, the Beatific Vision is not directly chosen, just as our desire for happiness is not directly chosen. (See ST I-II Q.10) Rather, we choose (or don’t choose) the means to that end. But baptism (and assent to the gospel) are freely chosen. So appealing to the inability of the saints in heaven to choose to lose the Beatific Vision (i.e. which inability is in actuality a gratuitous ability never to lose the Beatific Vision) is not comparable to choosing baptism and assent to the gospel, because the former is the condition of those who have already attained the final end, whereas the latter is the condition of those at the point of choosing (or not choosing) the means to that end.
Second, the freedom of the saints in heaven with respect to the Beatific Vision is the “freedom for the good,” whereas the relevant freedom of those in this life who choose baptism is natural freedom (i.e. freedom between alternatives). These are two different kinds of freedom. (See here.) So appealing to the compatibility of “freedom for the good” with the impossibility of choosing evil is not evidence that when the Holy Spirit moves persons to request baptism, He suppresses or thwarts their natural freedom such that they lose (in this one choice, at least) the ability to do otherwise. For St. Thomas, God has natural freedom (i.e. freedom between) only with respect to contingent goods, not with respect to the Beatific Vision. (See ST I Q.10) The saints in heaven, like God, do not have natural freedom with respect to the Beatific Vision. (See ST I Q.10). So your statement above equivocates on these two senses of freedom, by conflating them into one term, and then using the “freedom for the good” possessed by the saints in heaven with respect to the Beatific Vision as evidence that for St. Thomas the Holy Spirit in this present life can move the will irresistibly and simultaneously preserve human freedom. But that conclusion does not follow, because these are two different kinds of freedom. Hence the Church condemned the following error of Baius: “What is voluntarily done, even though it be done by necessity, is nevertheless freely done.” (Denz. 1039)
You wrote:
See footnote #5 here.
Which interpretations do you have in mind?
In the peace of Christ,
- Bryan
Do Bryan Cross’s comments imply that Domingo Banez’s position is heretical?
Hello Matt,
Welcome to CTC. The answer to your question is ‘no.’ There are similarities between Báñez’s position and that of Calvin, but Báñez’s position is within the bounds of Catholic orthodoxy, while Calvin’s [on this subject] is not. (See comment #8.)
In the peace of Christ,
- Bryan
Hello Bryan,
I was writing a post but I believe that Bradley has done a better job in succinctly answering the points you raised than I could have. Unfortunately, I will have very little or no time to participate on this thread in the near future.
God Bless,
William Scott
Thanks. It’s good to be here. I’ve been following Called to Communion and this particular thread for months. Please forgive the short question.
Comment #8 was helpful as far as “double predestination” is concerned, though many other (even early) Reformed theologians were rather cautious on those three points. See Peter Martyr Vermigli and Predestination (p. 58) for a useful discussion (large preview available on Google Books). It is also noteworthy that even Calvin uses the language of “passing by” in describing reprobation in the passage that you cite: “God is said to set apart those whom he adopts for salvation. It were most absurd to say, that he admits others fortuitously, or that they by their industry acquire what election alone confers on a few. Those, therefore, whom God passes by he reprobates, and that for no other cause but because he is pleased to exclude them from the inheritance which he predestines to his children.”
I’m still nervous about the discussion of resistibility. You may have already covered this, but in my reading of Domingo Banez, he frequently quotes Romans 9:19 in his debates with the Jesuits. Of course, efficacious grace preserves the freedom of the will, but this grace is infallible in bringing about its intended effect. So, this grace is resistible in only a rather qualified sense, no?
Garrigou-Lagrrange makes the point rather more precisely when he writes, “[The Council of Trent's] intention is to declare that even intrinsically efficacious grace does not deprive man of liberty, for he can resist if he so wills. The Council does not maintain that man does, in fact, sometimes dissent, but that “he can dissent if he so wills.” In other words, the contrary power remains, but under efficacious grace man never wills to resist, nor does he; otherwise the grace would not be efficacious or there would be a contradiction in terms; that is, otherwise grace would not cause us to act.”
I’m sure that everyone here knows these passages, but it is important for us to go as far as possible (within the boundaries of Catholic orthodoxy) to accommodate the formulation of our separated brethren. The Dominicans of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, accused so often of “Calvinism” and “Jansenism,” are thus a useful resource. Furthermore, it is worth noting that Reformed theologians of the seventeenth century drew upon Banez, Zumel, Lemos, Alvarez, and so on.
(Re: #53) Matthew Gaetano,
Long time to talk buddy! Hope everything is going well! Good to see you here!
Bradley
Bryan (re: #49),
1. I’m not convinced by your quotation from the Summa Contra Gentiles for two reasons.
a. First, it is now widely known that Thomas’s mature theology took a strong turn in the Augustinian direction after he was exposed to St. Augustine’s anti-pelagian writings later in life (this was, if I recall correctly, after he had already started writing the Summa Theologica, but not before he finished it). Joseph Wawrykow helpfully summarizes Aquinas’s indebtedness to his principle sources in his chapter: “Concluding Observations: Thomas and His Authorities,” Joseph P. Wawrykow, God’s Grace and Human Action: ‘Merit’ in the Theology of Thomas Aquinas (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995), 260-84.
It would be lovely if you could provide a quotation similar to this from the Summa Theologica itself, since it is recognized that although he may have been still developing his theology when he wrote it, nevertheless it is the most mature representation of what Aquinas believed. Aquinas’s commentary on Romans is considered one of his particularly “mature” Scripture commentaries, perhaps even put in its final form during his last years in Naples (1272-1273). On this point see also Eleonore Stump, “Biblical Commentary and Philosophy,” in The Cambridge Companion to Aquinas, ed. Norman Kretzmann and Eleonore Sump (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 254.
b. Secondly, however, even if we were to accept this quotation as representing part of what Aquinas says on this subject, we still have to bear in mind that in Aquinas’s metaphysic, any good that one creature has that another does not is owing to God’s causality, since God’s love is the cause of all goodness. The disposition actualized in the acceptance of grace is a “good” thing that some have and some do not. Thus Aquinas would say that, in the end, God loves one person more than the other. That’s simply what he says (and I wouldn’t even be comfortable putting it that way, but somehow Aquinas certainly was).
2. My quotation from Aquinas’s commentary on Romans was not mainly to underscore that Aquinas says that a movement of faith is not brought about chiefly by man’s will, but his own explanation of the reason why it’s not brought about chiefly by man’s will. The explanation was in the quotation:
Aquinas says nothing here about the “movement” being ambiguous in one direction or the other (as if the Holy Spirit causes them to either accept or reject), but is intended to communicate God’s grace as the sufficient principle for this type of movement. Confirming this is Aquinas’s quotation from Philippians, since in the verse Aquinas quotes God is moving with a particular intention—namely, to move them unto willing and unto working for his good pleasure. And do you recall what Aquinas says about God’s intention?
3. Now let me recall the other quotation from Aquinas that I referred to, because I found your response to this quotation very unconvincing, and I wanted to explain why. Here was the passage you quoted:
Although here Aquinas appears to be saying that God actually causes the movement of a person’s will to freely choose Him, not simply to decide one way or the other, you say that Aquinas is just “explaining that God moves each thing according to (i.e. in keeping with) its nature.” This is unconvincing on several grounds.
I will offer the larger context of the quotation that should make Aquinas’s aim here more clear: He is trying to answer the question of “Whether for the Justification of the Ungodly [there] is Required a Movement of the Free-Will”? His answer is not to say that God’s grace must be also complimented by man’s free-will decision if it is to justify (as if these two movements had different causes), but he entirely subsumes man’s free will decision to accept grace under the operation of grace itself the same way Augustine did. His point is that God’s justifying grace is what actually causes a person to freely choose Him in the act of justification (and that’s part of how he understands grace as the “principle” of movement in the justification of the ungodly). Thus he is making two points at once—1) that man is not justified without an act of the free will to accept grace, and 2) nevertheless it is God’s infusion of grace that sufficiently actualizes this acceptance. He says:
But what does Aquinas mean by “such as are capable of being moved thus”? Surely if your interpretation of Aquinas is right he intends to refer to people who are not disposed to accept grace right? But this is not at all what Aquinas means (as you seem to think). He clarifies this point also. In context, he is anticipating an objection about infants. His very next words are:
Thus “such as are capable” in context refers to all people able to use reason (this would exclude infants or those perhaps with mental illness, both of which he makes exceptons for).
4. Aquinas also teaches that in God’s “consequent will” he does not will all to be saved. To avoid the response “But you are taking Aquinas out of context,” will offer the full quotation. What does Aquinas means by consequent will? In answering the question of “Whether the Will of God is Always Fullfilled?” he answers:
Here Aquinas clearly takes the same approach as a Calvinist would to the passages that speak of God’s willing all to be saved. NOTE: His three interpretations each allow for God to not will every individual to be saved, and even to say that God wills “simply” that certain people be damned. Now I realize there a differences between saying this and saying God predestines people to damnation, but the difference between Calvin and the mature Aquinas is that one says “God predestines some to salvation and others to damnation” and the other says “No, he predestines some to salvation and others he wills simply to damnation” (taken in the sense explained above). Once we realize this, it takes the bite out of your claim that they are teaching something very different.
So I still don’t think your objections are a fair shake of the Thomistic corpus. I used to be confused about what Aquinas believed about x, y, or z (especially about grace and justification). That is, until I started to read him for myself. Now I feel very much like Peter Kreft feels: that whereas I used to read the expert Thomists [the supposed interpreters of Aquinas] to try to understand Aquinas, I now read Aquinas in order to understand and interpret the Thomists. In so many cases (though not in all), Aquinas is exceptionally perspicuous while his interpreters are not.
You asked me what passages I had in mind where Aquinas takes a Calvinistic approach to biblical interpretation. Although I referred you several times to my post “Aquinas the Calvinist” where you could’ve read this, I have now provided the full quotation from Aquinas above, which applies to all verses where “the Apostle” speaks of God’s willing all to be saved. But here, again, is the shorter post I wrote on it: http://theophilogue.com/2011/07/18/aquinas-the-calvinist-via-eastern-orthodoxy-how-could-it-be
For further treatment on Aquinas’s doctrine of Justification and how it more than satisfies the Protestant demand for grace-centered soteriology, see “Justification in Aquinas”: http://theophilogue.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/justification-in-aquinas_1xxx_.pdf
For a more detailed look into Aquinas’s anthropology of “free will” and how to categories his views, see “Love and Charity in Aquinas: A Selective Sketch”: http://theophilogue.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/love-and-charity-in-thomas-aquinas___last-edit__.pdf
Pax,
Bradley
I think that is spot on, and I think it relates to what I was trying to say in my comment #14 in this thread:
To explain what I mean by “efficacious”, please allow me to make an analogy between a drug that is efficacious and grace that is efficacious in the sense that I mean about efficay.
Suppose that I am dying and a physician freely offers me a drug that will cure my illness. He puts the cure in my hands and tells me that I must take this medicine in order to live. What I have in my hands is an efficacious drug, but the drug will not save my life unless I make the free choice to take it and use it. The efficacy of the drug is inherent in what it is, but it will not save me unless I make a choice to do something with it. Suppose I choose not to take the drug, and I give back the drug to the physician. The physician can give that drug to someone else that has my sickness, and it will not be wasted if that person chooses to take the free gift and use it as the physician intends it to be used.
I think the analogy that I am driving at should be obvious. The physician is the Lord, grace is the drug (the free gift) that will cure me, and I won’t be cured unless I cooperate with the Lord because the Lord isn’t going to force me to take what he has given me. Every man is given sufficient grace to save him, and that sufficient grace is efficacious because of what it is. Whether or not the sufficient grace given to me actually saves me does not depend on the efficacy of the grace, it depends on what I do with that grace – ex opere operato, ex opere operantis.
So why would I say that grace is always efficacious and it is never wasted? If I give back to the physician the drug that will cure me, he will give to someone else what I am rejecting, that is, if I reject the grace that the Lord gives me, the Lord will give that grace to someone else. The parable of the talents is germane to what I am asserting here about grace never being wasted:
The talents in this parable represent sanctifying grace – the cure that saves us from what is killing us, so to speak. The wicked servant that gave back to the master the talent that he had been given, had his talent taken from him and given to the one that had ten talents. IOW, grace is never wasted, even if it is rejected.
The error that Calvin made is that he asserts that God forces the elect to be “cured”. In my analogy, if I have been chosen by the physician to be cured, the physician would force me to take the cure whether I want it or not. Calvin’s fundamental error is that he asserts that no man has freewill when it comes to being saved or not being saved, and and Luther made the same mistake when he asserted that man had no freewill. The Catholic Church teaches that men have freewill, and that because God desires all me to be saved, all men are offered sufficient grace to be saved. The reason all men aren’t saved, is not because they are not given the grace that would save them, the reason that they aren’t saved is because they are given the grace that saves them, but they freely chose to reject that grace. I believe that this is the point that Fr. William Most is making – God loves everyone and offers them salvation out of his love. If a man is not saved, it is not because God does not love them, it is because they reject his love.
Matt,
Your comments are very good, and deserve a careful response (sorry if that sounds patronizing – I mean it as a compliment). I’ll try to come back to them in the near future.
Bradley, (re: #56)
As a principle of charity and intellectual honesty, we ought never to assume that an author has abandoned a position he has actually affirmed, unless he explicitly says so, or explicitly makes a claim entailing that he has done so (e.g. explicitly affirms a claim or set of claims entailing the falsehood of his prior claim). The hermeneutic of continuity applies not only to the Church, but also to a Doctor’s corpus. Otherwise, we can in effect make him say whatever we want. So I have no obligation to provide a quotation in the Summa Theologica repeating what St. Thomas says in the SCG. Rather, if you want to claim that St. Thomas abandoned the position he teaches in the SCG, the onus is on you to provide some quotation (or quotations) demonstrating that he did so. And you have not provided any such quotation. The quotations you have provided can be understood in a way that is compatible with (and informed by) St. Thomas continuing to affirm till his death what he taught in the SCG.
St. Thomas’s teaching that any good that one creature has that another creature does not is due to God’s causality, is fully compatible with what I have been saying, and is not evidence against what I’m saying. That is because if two persons each receive the same good from God, and one person rejects that good, then it is simultaneously true that in the result (a) the greater good had by the person who did not resist is from God, and (b) the resisting person’s lack of that greater good is not because God gave less to him. That’s why St. Thomas’s teaching that any good that one creature has that another creature does not have is due to God’s causality is not evidence against what I have been saying regarding St. Thomas’s teaching on grace. The fact that for St. Thomas some people have sanctifying grace and others do not, does not entail that for St. Thomas God gives truly sufficient actual grace only to some.
Of course St. Thomas does not say that the movement of actual grace is “ambiguous in one direction or another.” Nor did I say that the “the Holy Spirit causes them to either accept or reject.” If that is what you think I’m saying, then you are misunderstanding me. Actual grace, as I explained in my previous comment, is a movement in only one direction, namely, toward the supernatural end which is the Beatific Vision. This actual grace (which is ordered to the Beatific Vision) is given to all men, but we can resist it.
You wrote:
Yes, when God gives actual grace to men He does so with the intention of bringing them to the Beatific Vision.
You wrote:
You are assuming that for St. Thomas, if God intends something, then in order for it to happen infallibly, God must cause it in an irresistible way. But St. Thomas did not hold that. I explained in my previous comment that for St. Thomas, the infallibility is in God’s plan and His bringing about of that plan, and that does not require irresistible grace. The infallibility of God’s knowledge and of the bringing about of His plan does not require that God do everything He does in an irresistible way, i.e. a way that eliminates the human’s ability to choose otherwise. This truth is a more specific application of the broader truth (which St. Augustine argues in his De libero arbitrio) that the necessity of the truth of God’s perfect foreknowledge does not require or entail a necessity in human choice. In other words, the falsehood of real libertarian freedom is not entailed by the truth of infallible divine omniscience. That is why the passage you cite (from ST I-II Q.113 a.3) that God’s intention cannot fail is fully compatible with what I have been saying. The human mind seeks to attempt to explain the infallibility of the divine plan by way of irresistible [efficient] causation on God’s part, because that’s the only way we (as humans) know how to ensure (as best we can) the conformity of the outcome to our own plans. But God is not limited in this way.
Regarding St. Thomas’s claim that, “He so infuses the gift of justifying grace that at the same time He moves the free-will to accept the gift of grace, in such as are capable of being moved” (ST I-II.113.3), you wrote:
Again, it seems to me that you are misunderstanding me. I did not say that for St. Thomas God moves the person’s will “to decide one way or the other.” Yes, for St. Thomas operative actual grace restores the freedom to choose between cooperation with actual grace and resistance to actual grace, but that does not mean that actual grace moves the will “to decide one way or the other,” although in response to actual grace the human will must choose either to accept or reject (i.e. there is no third option). Actual grace is a divine movement ordered to our supernatural end, namely, the Beatific Vision. But that divine movement can be resisted by man, because God moves the rational creature in a way that preserves man’s ability to choose, and allows man to make use of his power to choose. (That’s why He made us on earth in this probationary period, rather than already in the Beatific Vision, namely, so that we can freely participate in our self-determination and salvation.)
You wrote:
Of course. I’ve been explaining the supernatural-natural (grace-nature) relation here at CTC since 2009, and especially in a number of different posts since September, drawing from the Feingold lecture series. What underlies the monergists’ error is the assumption that grace and glory are zero-sum (see here), and that therefore any causal activity on the part of the human will would “complement” the divine action, such that God gives some portion, and the human will gives the other portion. That’s not the way St. Thomas understands the relation of first and secondary causes in general, and it is not the way he understands the relation of grace and nature. When man cooperates with operative actual grace, the result is not “two movements.” The result is a human participation in the one divine movement. The non-participation way of construing the situation is a non-Catholic (and non-Thomistic) way of construing it. For St. Thomas, grace is a participation [by the creature] in the divine nature.
You wrote:
If by ‘subsumes’ you mean causally effects the human decision to accept-grace-and-not-reject-grace, then no, St. Thomas never says that or anything that entails that. But if you mean that by actual grace God draws all men to Himself, and does so in such way that His providential plan is infallibly brought about, then yes.
You wrote:
Yes, but this causation is one that preserves human freedom, and not by re-defining freedom such that the power to choose otherwise is removed (i.e. resistance is impossible). That is why the causation in view here is not as the hand moves the staff. And that is why “irresistible grace” does not follow from what St. Thomas says here.
You wrote:
St. Thomas does not say this, or say anything that entails this. Rather, what he says in SCG (quoted above) shows that for him, it remains in the power of the person to reject the grace God gives.
I don’t where you got the idea that for me, “such as are capable of being moved thus” refers to people who are “not disposed to accept grace.” I never said that, and I don’t believe that. By “such as are capable of being moved thus” he is referring to all humans who have attained the age of reason. (So, I completely agree with you about the meaning of “such as are capable of being moved thus”.)
You seem to think that it being true that for St. Thomas God, in His consequent will, does not will all men to be saved, is somehow problematic for what I have been saying. But, it is not problematic for what I have been saying, nor have you shown it to be problematic for what I have been saying. I discussed the distinction between antecedent and consequent will in footnote #5 here. God’s consequent will is not a universal salvific will (see comment #41 above) in part because He wills to allow men to freely choose to reject the sufficient actual grace He offers all men.
You wrote:
No, he doesn’t. Again, see footnote #5 here.
You wrote:
Heavens no! He lists out the three interpretations, and then shows that the third one is the way to understand the second one. (The first one is trivially true.) Because the third explains the second, it is misleading to say that God wills “simply” that certain people be damned. He only wills people to be damned in His consequent will, i.e. on account of their free rejection of the sufficient actual grace He offers them. But again, the distinction between antecedent will and consequent will is fully compatible with what I have been saying, and is no evidence against what I’ve been saying.
In the peace of Christ,
- Bryan
Does anyone know where I might be able to find an English translation of Joannes Laurentius Berti’s, De Theologicis Disciplinis, mentioned in the old Catholic Encyclopedia? I’d love to have a translation of this work if anyone is aware of one. Thanks a lot for the help!
With love in Christ,
Pete
Bradley Cochran,
I don’t really have much clue what you guys are talking about as I’ve never read Aquinas, nor do I plan to do so until I get through Augustine and Athanasius. Nevertheless, I couldn’t help notice this quote of yours in the last post
I find it interesting that you don’t want to say GOD loves some more than others when St. Paul says, in very unambiguous terms, “…Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated…”
I’m sure your reticence to make such statements has to do with the shape of your personality, but we all have to come to peace with the “thorny” parts of the Holy Writings…..
Hello Bryan,
I believe that for St. Thomas an election and predestination of certain individuals based on the infallible foreknowledge that they will cooperate with actual grace while others will resist is an election and predestination based on “foreseen merits.” I assume you are saying because cooperation with actual grace only occurs through operative actual grace it is not “merit” as defined by St. Thomas. Your constructs of Thomism (as I read them) are very compatible (on the Protestant side of the Tiber) with the teachings of Wesleyan Arminianism (closely paralleling the role of prevenient grace in that system). You may have a hard time convincing me that St. Thomas, St. Augustine, St. Prosper, etc held a belief largely equivalent to that of Wesleyan Arminianism on election and predestination (or that your definition of their beliefs, unless I’ve misread it, differs significantly from that of Wesleyan Arminianism). I confess that I have not read all of your posts as carefully as I might and therefore I may have misread you.
I’m sorry I don’t have time to flesh out my arguments more. I may be unable to write any further posts because of timing constraints. Regardless, it’s been a pleasure to discuss these points even briefly with you.
Your brother in Christ,
William Scott
p.s. Bradley is doing such a masterful job in expressing the points that I hold that there really isn’t much of substance that I need to add to this discussion.
Bryan (Re: #57),
I appreciate your engagement on this issue. I don’t know how many “rounds” I have time for in our respectful exchange of perspectives on this, so I will continue as best I can, but this may be the last lengthy reply I have time for right now.
1. I had already read your brief “footnote #5” that you refer to several times in your last repose before my last reply. I didn’t mention it for lack of time. There you say that Piper, Luther, Calvin, and Turretin argue that there are “two actually contrary wills in God” in such an unqualified manner that their position makes God out to be “schizophrenic,” so you accuse them of “Manichean dualism.” Being familiar with Piper’s view, I find your casual dismissal of his position with a few derogatory labels betrays a crass interpretation of his view. I wouldn’t be able to speak to Luther, Calvin, or Turretin, as I have never done an in depth study of them.
2. Here we enter into a debate of the very rudimentary meaning of language: by saying “yes” to God’s grace, one is also not saying “no” to it, and these are two sides of the same coin. Your claim is that Aquinas is not saying that God “causally effects the human decision to accept-grace-and-not-reject-grace,” yet you seem to be admitting that Aquinas does teach that God causes those who accept grace to accept it. It’s hard not to admit when Aquinas says things like this:
What you want me to do is provide some quotation from Aquinas where he explicitly says that God’s grace decisively effects one’s acceptance of grace. I may not be able to provide a quotation from Aquinas with those exact words, but here I think the burden of proof is on you, since
a) clearly Aquinas attributes one’s acceptance of grace to the causality of the infusion of grace itself and …
b) to accept grace is to not reject it (or cease from rejecting it)
Yes man’s will is free, and thus God must move it in such a way that it chooses Him “freely,” but if God can cause this to happen infallibly, then the free-will decision to accept grace is subsumed under the operation of grace.
3. You argue “yes, but this causation preserves human freedom.” I agree. But why? Because God’s grace is not decisive in Aquinas’s soteriology? I don’t think so. Its because God moves them “infallibly” to want to say “yes” to his grace. Now using Aquinas’s anthropology, one possible way of understanding why this preserves man’s freedom is because God moves man’s free will in such a way that they are caused to will Him (remember, the gift of charity is infused at justification), and once they will God as last end, they will (“infallibly”) freely choose the necessary means to that end. In other words, by moving a person to love God as last end, they will consequently (and Aquinas would add “infallibly” and “instantly” since he thinks initial justification happens instantly and includes the acceptance of grace) choose the necessary means to that end (i.e. grace).
4. You agree with me that Aquinas teaches that God “so infuses the gift of justifying grace that at the same time He moves the free-will to accept the gift of grace” in all people who are “of the age of reason” (or as I would put it, all people who have the power to reason). But you object that God “offers” sufficient actual grace to those who are ultimately damned (who are, we are assuming, also possessing the power to reason). But Aquinas does not speak of justifying grace as something that is “offered” to those who are able to reason (including the damned) to either accept or reject. Rather he teaches that this grace is “infused” and that this infusion is what actually causes the acceptance of grace (in those who are able to reason). In fact he teaches that the acceptance of grace takes place instantaneously when the justifying grace is infused.
For those who are not able to reason (such as infants), God “infuses” this grace anyway without the consent of their will. “Infants are not capable of the movement of their free-will; hence it is by the mere infusion of their souls that God moves them to justice” (ST I-II.113.3.ad.1).
5. At any rate I suspect you will still argue that the onus of proof is on me to show that Aquinas believed that grace sufficiently causes the free acceptance of grace, even though I believe the quotations above, when taken in context and interpreted correctly, already explicitly say as much, even if Aquinas doesn’t use the words “efficient” or “sufficient” to make his point.
6. You say:
Your reasoning?
Now Aquinas does not offer (as he often does) any objections to any of these interpretations, but simply offers them as ways the words of the Apostle can be understood. This is a familiar move for Aquinas. He often will offer several possible ways of understanding something. Sometimes he offers objections to some of those ways, other times he simply tells us which one he thinks is right. Other times (such as this one) he simply offers the interpretations. You seem to be assuming that his “explanation” of the second interpretation is an implicit demotion of the first, but this is ungrounded.
However, even if we assume that because he must offer a longer explanation of the second interpretation that this involves an implicit demotion of the first (which I think is unfounded), I am still stuck wondering how what I said was misleading since Aquinas so clearly says that God wills “simply” the damnation of the damned, and wills them to be saved only “in a qualified sense.”
Thomas’s explanation of “consequent will” is that it is the same as God’s “simple” will since it is what God wills “when all particular circumstances are considered.” Thus when I quote Aquinas in full context then suggest that God wills “simply” the damnation of the damned, you say this is “misleading”? I gave the full quote to give the sense in which I meant “simple,” precisely to avoid being accused of saying something “misleading” or out of context, yet you still say it’s “misleading” just because what I called Aquinas’s “third” explanation was actually an explanation of the second one? I don’t see how this makes my comment “misleading,” but I can understand why what I’m saying would be irritating to you, since it seems to make Aquinas out to be teaching something very similar to Calvinism.
Calvin = God predestines the elect to salvation and passively ordains or predestines reprobate to damnation, although in another sense he wants all to be saved.
Aquinas= God wills “simply” the salvation of the elect, and wills “simply” the damnation of the damned, but “in a qualified sense” wills all to be saved by his antecedent will.
Again, Aquinas so clearly says that God wills “simply” the damnation of the damned, and only wills them to be saved “in a qualified sense.” Let’s not forget that Aquinas’s conclusion to his entire article is that “Thus it is clear that whoever God simply wills takes place; although what He wills antecedently may not take place.” The whole point of the article is for him to show how it can be true that everything God wills comes to pass, yet so many people are damned. Aquinas is viewing the fact that “so many people are damned” as a potential objection to his position that God’s will always comes to pass. This forces him into the same dilemma as Calvinists who say God wants all to be saved (in some sense) but wills the damnation of the damned in another sense. The position forces one to make distinctions about the “will” of God, giving them different “senses.” Therefore, Aquinas’s main point in this article is to show that everything that God wills comes to pass—even if this means he must also affirm (since so many are damned) that God wills “simply” the damnation of the damned.
7. At any rate, I respect your position Bryan. I don’t think this needs to be a dividing disagreement. Part of my concern is to show that the truths important to most Calvinists are ably refined and articulated in Aquinas, and Aquinas is “acceptable” to the Catholic Church.
8. I understand what you mean when you say we must try to interpret people “charitably,” but not everyone writes a “Retractions” book before they die like Augustine did so we can read in the author’s own words about what they came to change their minds about, and part of why scholars all agree with the “mature Aquinas” distinction I mentioned is because he seems to take such a more faithfully Augustinian approach to his teaching of grace in the Summa that could be contrasted to things he said earlier, so I would argue that it’s reasonable to answer the question: “Why does Aquinas seems to teach such an Augustinian position in the Summa whereas before he seemed to have taught something different” by saying: “This fits with what we know about his later access to the anti-Pelagian writings of St. Augustine. He appears to have ‘developed’ his theology on this point.” I realize that you would rather interpret the Summa Theologica in light of the quote you offered from the Summa Contra Gentiles, but I (and other scholars) would suggest it the other way around, and for good reason.
9. Thanks for all your interaction. I am very thankful for all the resources you make available here at CTC. I respect you guys a lot.
Pax,
Bradley
Hello again Bryan,
Sorry for triple posting. I noticed a misstatement on my part that I had to correct before calling it quits.
I said:
“I assume you are saying because cooperation with actual grace only occurs through operative actual grace it is not “merit” as defined by St. Thomas.” [Of course, as you would agree, such cooperation does have "condign merit" according to St. Thomas].
Corrected:
“I assume you are saying because cooperation with actual grace only occurs through operative actual grace does not fall under the “foreknown merit” that St. Thomas says has no role in who is or is not elected and predestined by the Lord (ST Ques 23 Article 5).”[ There may be another reason that I missed because of my admittedly quick read through of your posts.]
God Bless,
William Scott
Bradley,
I appreciate your comments, and I hope the discussion is helpful. I should reaffirm what I said to Matt above, that Báñez’s position is within the bounds of orthdoxy. The question here (between you and me) is what position St. Thomas held. There are fundamental and essential differences between the position of St. Thomas and Calvin. The position Calvin takes in Institutes III.23 regarding reprobation is outside the bounds of Catholic orthodoxy.
You wrote:
It is not a label or set of labels; it is an argument, and your labels (e.g. ‘causual’ and ‘crass’) don’t refute my argument.
I agree.
Yes, but for St. Thomas, God moves the human will not as the hand moves the staff, but in a way that allows the will to retain its power of free choice, and in which the will freely chooses (with the real power of choosing otherwise).
Yes, but you are assuming that this ‘causality’ is as the hand moves the staff. And in this way you are reading into St. Thomas a position he himself does not affirm.
I agree if by ‘is’ you mean includes or entails.
But none of this shifts the burden of proof, because it does not show that St. Thomas rejected what he taught in the SCG; instead, it begs the question by reading into what he is saying precisely what is in question.
I addressed this claim in my previous comment.
As I explained in #57, the infallibility of the bringing about of God’s plan does not entail that God gives an irresistible grace only to some. You are assuming (and not actually demonstrating) that for St. Thomas, God can infallibly bring about His plan only by giving irresistible grace to some.
You are assuming, however, that for St. Thomas, in this one case [the transition from being without sanctifying grace to having sanctifying grace] God deprives man of natural freedom (defined above), and thus that God moves the will the way the hand moves the staff. But you haven’t demonstrated the truth of this assumption.
That’s because for St. Thomas, justifying grace is sanctifying grace, whereas what I have been talking about is the human response to operative actual grace. For the distinction between actual grace and sanctifying grace, see here.
I agree, but that is perfectly compatible with what I have been saying.
If by “sufficiently causes” you mean that man cannot resist the actual grace God gives, then yes, you haven’t shown that St. Thomas holds that position. Your claim that “taken in context and interpreted correctly” he explicitly says as much begs the question.
I don’t think he offers an explanation particularly of the second interpretation. His explanation in the last paragraph of that reply synthesizes all three interpretations, by explaining the first two in light of the third.
Because ‘simply’ can be used in different senses. The term can be used to apply to the intention in abstraction (apart from the consideration of other factors), or it can apply to the concrete [i.e. not abstracted] intention as the concrete intention [in light of all the other factors]. When St. Thomas uses it in this final paragraph of his reply to objection 1, he is using it of the concrete intention as the concrete intention. But when you say “God wills simply the damnation of the damned” you are using that as evidence that St. Thomas holds some kind of doctrine of double predestination, the way Calvin in Institutes III.23 says that reprobates depends entirely [simply] on God’s willing it so, and not on anything else. In other words, you are using ‘simply’ as not the result [at least in part] of foreseen demerit, when for St. Thomas, God’s consequent will to damn the damned does take into consideration the free choice by those persons to reject the sufficient actual grace God gives them. So your statement is misleading because you are using ‘simply’ in a different way than St. Thomas does here. And your statement needs to be qualified, because you need to specify the sense of ‘simply’ St. Thomas is using in this paragraph, because otherwise the statement is misleading for the reason I have just explained.
I’m not “irritated” in the least. I used to hold the position you yourself are advocating. What should be interesting and surprising to you is the fact that you cannot actually demonstrate that St. Thomas held the position you think he held.
This isn’t about what I would “rather” do, as if my argument reduces to my personal appetites. Yes, not everyone writes retractions, but that doesn’t change the truth of the principle I stated in #57 regarding the hermeneutic of continuity, nor does the fact that you can find scholars who agree with your interpretation of the “exceptionally perspicuous” St. Thomas. There are scholars who hold the position I am describing as well. So the appeal to scholars doesn’t decide the question. Ultimately, we have to find the evidence for St. Thomas’s position in St. Thomas. Just because St. Thomas became more aware of St. Augustine’s anti-Pelagian works, and shows that influence, it does not follow that he abandoned the position he states explicitly in the SCG. St. Thomas is informed by (and recognizes the authority of) the broader Catholic tradition, which includes, for example, the teaching of St. John Damascene on the distinction between antecedent and consequent will. And that broader Catholic tradition does not follow St. Augustine on this particular question.
In the peace of Christ,
- Bryan
Bryan & Bradley,
You may both be aware of the following text from De Rationibus Fidei, written after SCG. However, it strikes me as rather clearly pointing in the direction of Bryan’s interpretation of St. Thomas. The text is from Chapter 10, relevantly titled:
That divine predestination does not impose necessity on human acts
Pax Christi,
Ray
I’m up late working on things relating to my upcoming wedding–but I couldn’t help writing one last last last post (it might really be the last one I’m able to write, seriously).
I would just note quickly that the excellent quote from St. Thomas is fully supportive of what Bradley is stating about the position of St. Thomas (and St. Augustine’s and Calvin’s position for that matter)–and actually helps make his point.
Namely, the infallible or “irresistible” working of God in the elect (that invariably results in their cooperation with actual grace) never violates the free will by making them cooperate by “necessity” (or by force) rather than freely. Rather, for St. Thomas (St. Augustine, St. Prosper, etc) it infallibly causes them to “freely will” to cooperate with the actual grace of God (because for St. Thomas “[God] acts in everything and moves each single thing to its actions according to the manner proper to each thing” and “it is natural for [man] to act freely, not forced”).
As I noted earlier, even Calvin agrees essentially with St Thomas in the above quote in noting that God works so that men come to Christ not of necessity (i.e. “forced” to come against their will, or “unwillingly”) but willingly:
“…it is not violent, so as to compel men by external force; but still it is a powerful impulse of the Holy Spirit, which makes men willing who formerly were unwilling and reluctant.” Commentary on John.
God Bless,
William Scott
Matt, (re: #53-54)
It seems to me that the difference between Calvin’s doctrine of reprobation, and that of the Catholic Church, should be clarified here. I agree that we should affirm common ground, but it is no less a vice to cover over actual disagreement than it is to find disagreement where there is none. And it seems to me that we should avoid both vices.
According to Calvin, reprobation is not consequent upon foreseen demerit, but is the reason why the reprobate fall into sin, remain in sin unto death, and so end up in hell as the just punishment for their sin. For Calvin, the reprobate are predestined to hell in the same way that the elect are predestined unto heaven, as an unconditional positive decree, to which the means to that end are then [in logical, not temporal order] determined. God decrees to damn some, and then [logically, not temporally] chooses the means of getting them to hell, namely, by decreeing their fall into sin, not giving them grace for salvation, and then justly punishing them for their sin. Calvin writes:
In the words, God created two groups of people; one group was created for heaven, and the other group was created for hell. The damned were created for the purpose of glorifying God by their damnation; their sin and remaining in sin unto death are means to achieving the end for which God created them.
The reason God reprobates some is fundamentally His will, not any other reason, not on account of their foreseen demerit. (Here in this section, Calvin takes a divine command theory notion of the relation of God’s will to justice.)
Again, for Calvin the reason for reprobation is not foreseen demerit, but God’s pleasure. God is pleased to exclude some of humanity from heaven, not because He foresees that they freely reject grace, but merely because it pleases Him to make some people for the purpose of eternal damnation. He says the same thing at the end of that section:
This notion of reprobation is contrary to the teaching of the Catholic Church regarding reprobation. According to the Catholic teaching, hell is not positively decreed to the damned, and the reprobate are not predestined to fall into sin as a means to justly deserve hell. The Catholic teaching on reprobation can be seen in the Council of Orange (AD 529):
In this life the power of God does not leave anyone unable to avoid evil or be saved from evil, and thus the grace of God does not leave anyone unable to be saved. The notion that God foreordains anyone to evil by His power, rather than by allowing them to reject grace is anathematized.
This doctrine concerning reprobation can also be seen in the Council of Quiersy (AD 853):
In other words, though God foreknew that the reprobate would perish, He did not predestine anyone to perish. He predestined a certain punishment [i.e. eternal punishment] for those whom He created for eternal life, but whom He knew would freely choose to reject grace, and whom He permitted to reject grace.
This same Catholic understanding of reprobation can be seen in the Third Council of Valence (AD 855):
Valence clarifies that by “predestined to evil by divine power” the meaning is that the reprobate could not but do evil, i.e. they could not choose to do right. And that entails that sufficient grace is offered to all, even the reprobate.
The Council of Trent likewise condemned double predestination, again with this language of divine power:
Here again, the condemned position is one that predestines persons to evil by depriving them of the grace they need in order to obey God.
For Calvin it is false that God truly desires the salvation of all men without exception. But in the Catholic teaching God does desire the salvation of all men without exception; this is why (contra the Jansenists) the Church teaches that Christ died for all men without exception. (See here.) For Calvin, sufficient grace is not offered to the reprobate, but in Catholic doctrine sufficient grace is offered to all (otherwise, that would be double-predestination). For Calvin, the human will, being dead, does not participate voluntarily in regeneration (Institutes II.3.6), and cannot resist grace; therefore, since universalism is false, double predestination logically follows. But in Catholic doctrine, the will cooperates in regeneration (Council of Trent, VI, Canon 4), and can resist sufficient grace (which is offered to all), and therefore double predestination does not follow. So these are real, substantive differences between Calvin and the Catholic Church on the doctrine of reprobation.
In #53 you wrote:
For Báñez efficacious grace is not resistible, or at least not ultimately resistible, while sufficient grace is resistible. One difficulty for Báñez’s position is precisely in explaining how efficacious grace preserves the freedom of the will. I recommend listening to Prof. Feingold’s answer to question #5 in the Q&A here.
One problem with the Garrigou-Lagrrange quotation in #54 is that if all the persons who received efficacious grace (as conceived in the Báñezian sense) did not retain the power to resist in the very moment in which it was given, the result would be the same. For example, I could also say that when I throw a rock, it could dissent if it willed, and that the power to dissent remains, but that it never wills to dissent. But, of course, the problem is that the result would be the same if the rock had no power of dissent. So LG’s statement seems to be a merely semantic avoidance of the problem.
Another problem with the LG claim is that in the quotation LG seems to think that unless grace were irresistibly efficacious, it would not cause us to act. But that can’t be right, because of the following quadrilemma: Either (1) sufficient grace would not cause us to act, in which case either (a) sufficient grace is truly sufficient, in which case our action to salvation in response to sufficient grace would only our own motion, which would constitute Pelagianism, or (b) sufficient grace is not truly sufficient, Or (2) sufficient grace would cause us to act, in which case either (a) sufficient grace reduces to efficacious grace, which entails either universalism or Calvinism, or (b) sufficient grace is still grace but is not efficacious grace, in which case grace doesn’t have to be irresistibly efficacious in order to cause us to act. But (1a), (1b), and (2a) are problematic, and therefore (2b).
In the peace of Christ,
- Bryan
1. I certainly agree that we must avoid both vices, as you have described them, but these comments, especially the criticisms of Garrigou-Lagrange and Bañez, might bear out my concern that *some* of the criticisms of Calvinism are rooted in a Congruist or even Molinist perspective, rather than the much broader range of opinions permitted within Catholic orthodoxy. And as you know, the opinion further from Calvin in the De Auxiliis controversy (Molinism) was much closer to a papal condemnation than the view of the Dominicans. (The great historian of Molinism, Stugmuller, talks about Molinism merely receiving privileges as a “guest”: [link].) The proximity of Bañezianism to Jansenism cannot make us forget that the former has been recognized as an authentically Catholic opinion over and over again. I want to make it clear that I am not condemning Molinism in any way, but I am nervous that Molinism is sometimes used as the basis for condemning Calvinism as heresy. Calvinism may very well be heretical on these points, but let us use the most rigorous Augustinian perspective allowed to us as Catholic as the basis for our critique.
2. It is not so simple to say that, for Thomas Aquinas, reprobation is consequent upon foreseen demerit. I was planning to touch upon your other points, but I have now decided to touch upon just this issue here, which seems to be at the root of your critique. I hope that we can cover the other points in future discussion. Maintaining the distinction between reprobation and God’s decision to punish or damn particular individuals is extremely important.
Divine reprobation is the will to permit some to fall away from the end of eternal life. Aquinas says that He wills to permit that certain individuals fall away on the basis of His “simple will” and that this decision “has no reason”:
(I.23.5) “Yet why He chooses some for glory, and reprobates others, has no reason, except the divine will. Whence Augustine says (Tract. xxvi. in Joan.): “Why He draws one, and another He draws not, seek not to judge, if thou dost not wish to err.” Thus too, in the things of nature, a reason can be assigned, since primary matter is altogether uniform, why one part of it was fashioned by God from the beginning under the form of fire, another under the form of earth, that there might be a diversity of species in things of nature. Yet why this particular part of matter is under this particular form, and that under another, depends upon the simple will of God; as from the simple will of the artificer it depends that this stone is in part of the wall, and that in another; although the plan requires that some stones should be in this place, and some in that place. Neither on this account can there be said to be injustice in God, if He prepares unequal lots for not unequal things. This would be altogether contrary to the notion of justice, if the effect of predestination were granted as a debt, and not gratuitously. In things which are given gratuitously, a person can give more or less, just as he pleases (provided he deprives nobody of his due), without any infringement of justice. This is what the master of the house said: “Take what is thine, and go thy way. Is it not lawful for me to do what I will?” (Matthew 20:14-15).”
Thomas Aquinas addresses the issue of “symmetry” between the predestined and the reprobate in article 3 of Q. 23. The objector states, ” if God reprobates any man, it would be necessary for reprobation to have the same relation to the reprobates as predestination has to the predestined. But predestination is the cause of the salvation of the predestined. Therefore reprobation will likewise be the cause of the loss of the reprobate. But this false. For it is said (Hosea 13:9): “Destruction is thy own, O Israel; Thy help is only in Me.” God does not, then, reprobate any man.” Now, based on your post, we would expect Thomas to say in response that reprobation is based upon foreknowledge of demerits, while predestination is based simply on God’s goodness or something to that effect. But Thomas Aquinas does not say this. Here is his reply:
“Reprobation differs in its causality from predestination. This latter is the cause both of what is expected in the future life by the predestined–namely, glory–and of what is received in this life–namely, grace. Reprobation, however, is not the cause of what is in the present–namely, sin; but it is the cause of abandonment by God. It is the cause, however, of what is assigned in the future–namely, eternal punishment. But guilt proceeds from the free-will of the person who is reprobated and deserted by grace. In this way, the word of the prophet is true–namely, ‘Destruction is thy own, O Israel.’”
So, the asymmetry is not rooted in the fact that God foresees demerits and then reprobates. Aquinas teaches that divine reprobation is the cause of the abandonment by God, while man himself is the cause of his sin. God is unqualifiedly, as we would agree, the cause of the punishment of the damned, which is just because *damnation* (not reprobation) is consequent upon man’s sin.
Here are a few more quite relevant passages on reprobation from Q. 23:
“God loves all men and all creatures, inasmuch as He wishes them all some good; but He does not wish every good to them all. So far, therefore, as He does not wish this particular good–namely, eternal life–He is said to hate or reprobated them.”"
“The reason for the predestination of some, and reprobation of others, must be sought for in the goodness of God.”
“Now of all creatures the rational creature is chiefly ordained for the good of the universe, being as such incorruptible; more especially those who attain to eternal happiness, since they more immediately reach the ultimate end. Whence the number of the predestined is certain to God; not only by way of knowledge, but also by way of a principal pre-ordination. It is not exactly the same thing in the case of the number of the reprobate, who would seem to be pre-ordained by God for the good of the elect, in whose regard “all things work together unto good” (Romans 8:28). Concerning the number of all the predestined, some say that so many men will be saved as angels fell; some, so many as there were angels left; others, as many as the number of angels created by God. It is, however, better to say that, “to God alone is known the number for whom is reserved eternal happiness.”
“Hence reprobation implies not only foreknowledge, but also something more, as does providence, as was said above (Question 22, Article 1). Therefore, as predestination includes the will to confer grace and glory; so also reprobation includes the will to permit a person to fall into sin, and to impose the punishment of damnation on account of that sin.”
The last passage is a good summary of what I have been trying to argue here. For Aquinas, reprobation is not mere foreknowledge of demerits. It is “something more.” He has willed to abandon, to desert, some and not others based upon His simple will, His goodness, and for no reason that we can discern. This abandonment does not impose any necessity that the reprobate will sin, but it is conditionally impossible that they obtain grace and thus that they will avoid sin, at least in the long-run. They sin freely and then they are condemned to hell justly.
You may not agree with this perspective, but do you deny that it is within the bounds of Roman Catholic orthodoxy? If so, why? If not, might we proceed on *this* basis to discuss the errors of Calvinism?
William, (re: #67)
You are claiming that freedom, for St. Thomas, means not being coerced against one’s will, and therefore that so long as God moves man’s will to faith and baptism in such a way that man does not experience the movement as coercion, but as what he himself wants to do (because he has been caused to want it by God), man is still free, even if he cannot do otherwise.
But St. Thomas does not think that the ability to do otherwise is merely accidental to natural freedom. Natural freedom, for St. Thomas, is not defined phenomenologically, as the experience of non-coercion, even if one is actually necessitated (i.e. moved such that cannot do otherwise). Causal necessity, for St. Thomas, means the absence of alternatives, not the experience of coercion. In answering the question, “Is the will moved of necessity by God?” St. Thomas answers:
By its very nature the will is not determinate to one thing, but indifferent to many things, for anything except the Beatific Vision. So when God in His providence moves the will [in this life], He does so in a way that does not “determine it of necessity to one thing.” When St. Thomas says “determine it of necessity to one thing” he is not talking about the phenomenology of experiencing oneself as unable to do what one actually wants, or as being coerced against one’s will. He is talking about having the ability to do otherwise, the power to choose between alternatives, to say yes when one in fact said no, and to say no when one in fact said yes. Determining the will of necessity to one thing would eliminate that power. For St. Thomas, to be moved of necessity is by the very meaning of the term to be moved without the ability to do otherwise, not merely to be moved such that one is not being coerced against one’s will even if one is being moved of necessity. So for St. Thomas, when God moves the will, He preserves human freedom by preserving the power to choose between alternatives. Merely removing the experience of coercion would not be sufficient to preserve human freedom.
St. Thomas argues a similar point in ST I Q.22 a.4, where he explains that providence [of which predestination is a part] does not impose necessity on that which is contingent. In answering the question, “Does man choose of necessity or freely?” St. Thomas writes:
Here again St. Thomas teaches that man does not choose of necessity, precisely because the will has the power to move to alternatives. For St. Thomas, if man did not have the power to move to alternatives, he would ‘choose’ of necessity. ‘Necessity’ for St. Thomas is not phenomenological, but ontological. What is possible not to be is not necessary, and what is not possible not to be is necessary. So when St Thomas teaches that freedom and necessity are incompatible, he is not saying that freedom is incompatible with the experience of coercion; he is saying rather that [natural] freedom is incompatible with the inability to do otherwise.
For St. Thomas, this is true even for God Himself. When answering the question “Does God have free will?” St. Thomas writes:
Notice that the incompatibility of necessity and free will is true even for God. God does not have free will with respect to that which He wills necessarily. He has free will only with respect to that which He does not will necessarily. But of course by ‘necessity’ here St. Thomas is not speaking of God experiencing Himself as being coerced. He is talking about that which God cannot but will, i.e. the absence of alternative possibilities. So St. Thomas is claiming here that God has free will only with respect to matters about which He has alternative possibilities. And for St. Thomas, the same is true of man.
Understanding St. Thomas’s position regarding the causal relation of God to man’s will in ordinary providence helps us understand his position regarding the causal relation of God man’s will in redemption, because for St. Thomas, grace builds on nature, and therefore grace upholds (and does not corrupt) the integrity of the freedom God preserves in man in ordinary providence.
We can see his notion of the effect of grace when he writes about the fall of Satan:
For St. Thomas, the great grace given to the greatest angel imposed no necessity upon him. What does St. Thomas mean here by ‘necessity’? He shows what he means by saying “it was in his power not to follow it.” In other words, St. Thomas is not using a phenomenological conception of necessity, but referring rather to the impossibility of doing otherwise. We know that Satan had no necessity imposed him by grace, precisely because it was in his power to reject the grace that had been given to him. The same is true of man.
In the preceding question St. Thomas makes a similar point, and if Bradley is looking for a repeat in the ST of the position stated in the SCG, this is one place where we see it:
The objector is claiming that since grace turns the rational creature toward God, therefore if angels had been given grace, no angel would ever have fallen away from God. St. Thomas replies by showing that the movement of grace in the angel does not impose necessity, but the one who has grace can fail to make use of it, and thus can sin. That is true not only of the angel, but also of the human. To incline the subject according to the mode of the subject’s nature, the grace given to the free creature cannot remove that freedom by imposing necessity (i.e. removing the possibility of doing otherwise). Rather, for St. Thomas, the possibility of falling from grace indicates that grace does not necessitate, but leaves open the freedom to resist. Of course you could propose that the angels who fell received sufficient-but-not-efficacious grace, whereas the elect angels received efficacious grace. But St. Thomas makes no distinction between sufficient and efficacious grace, between the grace received by the elect angels and the grace received by the angels who fell. Instead he uses the case of the angels who fell to draw a conclusion about grace itself and the way God graciously moves all rational creatures, both angels and men.
That’s the general principle for St. Thomas; in giving grace to men, God does not impose necessity (i.e. the impossibility of the contrary) on men. St. Thomas writes:
Here St. Thomas examines St. Augustine’s claim that if God wills someone’s salvation, then that person must necessarily be saved. St. Thomas shows that the necessity is (a) conditional, not absolute, and (b) applicable to the truth of the conditional, not to the mode of causation of the salvation. In other words, we see St. Thomas carefully distinguish between conditional necessity (e.g. if God [consequently] wills x, then necessarily, x will occur), and the necessity of causation such that the agent cannot do otherwise. St. Thomas does not treat conditional necessity as entailing causal necessity. He makes the distinction precisely to preserve the freedom of the person who receives grace.
With regarding to predestination, St. Thomas distinguishes between absolute impossibility and conditional impossibility, and between absolute necessity and conditional necessity. He writes:
Absolute impossibility is not conditioned on any free choice. That’s the form of the doctrine of reprobation that is condemned by the Church. Conditional impossibility is an impossibility conditioned on a free choice (with the ability to choose otherwise) on the part of man to reject grace. Likewise, the necessity of the salvation of the predestined, for St. Thomas, is, as he says here, a conditional necessity that does not do away with the liberty of choice, i.e. the power to do otherwise. Even though you are denying that the elect have any phenomenological experience of coercion or necessitation by God, the sort of ontological necessity you seem to be advocating is an absolute necessity, since it determines the choice itself, and thus is not a conditional necessity. But as you can see, that’s not the position St. Thomas affirm.
In his answer to the question, “Whether man has free will?, St. Thomas writes:
Here he specifically addresses the Romans 9 passage, as it is used by an objector to claim that man does not have free will because God’s will determines what man does. St. Thomas responds in a subtle way by showing that St. Paul’s teaching in Romans 9 does not imply that man has no free will, but that free will is not sufficient to attain to salvation, “unless it be moved and helped by God.” Quite likely the “moved” refers to operative actual grace, and the “helped” refers to cooperative actual grace. But for St. Thomas, neither operative actual grace nor cooperative actual grace necessitate a human choice. Operative actual grace restores to man the freedom to choose between grace and the rejection of grace, a freedom the first man (Adam) had been given. (See here.) And cooperative grace is God’s cooperation with man who has consented to the movement of operative actual grace (see ST I-II Q.111 a.2). Grace, therefore, does not destroy or suppress the natural power of the will to choose between alternatives; grace preserves that power, and thus man can resist the grace given to him.
In that same article, St. Thomas raises the objection that since God moves the human will, therefore man does not have free will. The objection reads:
St. Thomas replies:
The way you seem to be interpreting this sort of passage is by treating “moving voluntary causes” as the hand moves the staff, and then redefining ‘voluntary’ phenomenologically, i.e. as the experience of being the cause of one’s own action, and not experiencing coercion, even if in fact one cannot do otherwise. But that’s not what St. Thomas says. He says that when God moves voluntary causes, He does so not as the hand moves the staff, but in such a way that He preserves their free will and the voluntariness of their choices, since He Himself created their free will, and thus preserves their ability to do otherwise when He moves them. Otherwise He would be moving them in a way contrary to the nature He gave them, and would in that respect be contradicting Himself.
From these passages, we see that for St. Thomas necessity and voluntariness are not phenomenological; they are ontological, and include the ability to do otherwise, even resist and fall way. And that is the correct way to interpret the passage Ray posted from De Rationibus Fidei (thanks Ray), not to phenomenologize the term ‘necessity,’ but to understand ‘necessity’ as St. Thomas himself uses it, namely, as referring to the impossibility of any alternative. The infallibility of God’s providential plan does not require Him to remove the power of choice [and thus the power to resist] from any free creature. Instead of phenomenologizing ‘voluntariness,’ ‘necessity,’ and ‘free will’ such that the ability to do otherwise is removed when God moves man, the more astounding and beautiful teaching of St. Thomas is that except in the unique case of the beatific vision, God ordinarily moves free creatures such that they retain their ability to choose otherwise, and hence retain their ability to resist even His moving them.
In the peace of Christ,
- Bryan
Hello Bryan,
While I stand by what I said in my former post (and I would love to respond to each point and quotation you have raised), unfortunately I don’t have time to give the kind of response that your well thought out post deserves (my schedule has become so busy that I’m having to swear off writing any further posts).
God bless,
William
p.s. Excellent post Matthew. What appears to be an essential subsuming of Thomism under Molinism by many when dealing with Calvinism has been troubling to me as well.
Jeremiah (RE: #64),
I don’t think the Apostles’s words here are “very unambiguous.” Although clearly Scripture says God hates certain people, figuring out what that means is not easy. I agree with Aquinas that God loves some people more than others, but I would be uncomfortable affirming this to people who would probably read into this statement something untrue. In other words, being a little uncomfortable “putting it that way” is different than denying it.
Hope that makes sense.
Pax,
Bradley
Stamper (Re: #64),
I’m not trying to ignore the contribution you have made to this discussion. I just don’t think your quotation supports Bryan’s interpretation, but I don’t have the time to figure out what assumptions you might in your interpretation of it. Thanks for the contribution though!
Pax,
Bradley
Bryan (RE: #63),
This dialogue has led me to a better articulation of my position (which I articulate below), and for this I am truly grateful. This is why I participate in blog discussions like this. It can have the potential to sharpen all of the participants. I hope you feel the same way, and I am eager to see how you will now respond to my counter-claims about Aquinas.
1. I objected that I quoted Aquinas in context to allow him to clarify his own meaning of God’s “simple” will specifically to avoid being told that I took him out of context or any such thing, so I asked you why you would still say that my conclusion that Aquinas says God wills “simply” the damnation of the damned is “misleading.” Here was your basic response:
But this misses the reason for my objection. That was the whole reason why I specifically clarified the “sense” in which I was using the word. Your charge of ambiguity is hard to understand here.
2. You also said:
You didn’t use the word “offer” here, but said God actually “gives” them sufficient actual grace. The question is: sufficient for what? Now for Aquinas God’s justifying grace for the predestined is sufficient to cause their free-will to accept grace.
If by “sufficient actual grace,” you mean “infallible” grace in same sense as Aquinas, it would be impossible for anyone to ultimately reject it inasmuch as it is impossible to thwart God’s intention. (We will look closer at the question of whether this means that Aquinas could be said to hold to a doctrine of “irresistible grace” later in my reply)
3. It is remarkable strategy that you would attribute an analogy to me that I never used (a hand moving a chair) and then criticize me on the basis of my use of this bad analogy. That’s like moving the chess pieces of your opponent (instead of letting her make her own moves) and then saying “check mate” once you’ve trapped her King.
The best analogy I can think of (off the top of my head) is a starving man who is “moved” infallibly by the object of food to accept and eat food if (while starving) it is offered (out of his natural desire to be happy and his perception that eating the food is necessary to this happiness). As regards the hand-chair analogy, however, Aquinas was actually fond of the archer-arrow analogy on this question:
4. Now for someone who is so insistent that we not represent Aquinas’s thought in a way that doesn’t use his exact words, it came as a surprise to me that you said:
Au Contraire! Haven’t I been saying/agreeing all along that God’s infallible grace does not violate man’s freedom? Yet by methods that escape me you have managed to read into what I’ve said just the opposite! How did you do that? Teach us your methods! NOTE: I have never assumed, argued, or stated any such thing. Can you quote to me anything I said about God depriving man of his freedom via infallible grace?
I am afraid here you are knocking down a scarecrow, for even in my most cage-stage Calvinistic shtick I never once believed that God’s “irresistible grace” violated man’s freedom. Rather, I have always felt that debates over predestination and infallible grace actually hinge almost entirely on two fundamentally different notions of what exactly human freedom entails. You will not be surprised that on this question also I find Aquinas’s way of defining human freedom hard to improve (again, see my thoughts about this on pgs 18-27 here: http://theophilogue.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/love-and-charity-in-thomas-aquinas___last-edit_010612__.pdf).
3. Aquinas clarifies different types of necessity (as we might expect him to do, since he loves to qualify different “senses” given to different words). His distinction between absolute necessity and conditional necessity sheds light on the question were are discussing. God wills his own goodness by absolute necessity, but nothing else. Everything else God wills is only willed conditionally, and this includes all that God wills by his providence (whether trees should be hard or soft, whether there should be 40000 languages in the world or 70,000,000, whether the New York Giants will win the Superbowl in 2011 or 2010, etc.)
4. AQUINAS BELIEVED IN IRRESISTIBLE GRACE (in the way I explain below) AND EFFICIACIOUS GRACE (in the way I explain below)
a) :: IRRESISTIBLE GRACE IN AQUINAS :: Now predestination is part of God’s providence. So, for example, if God wills that Devin Rose be predestined, we might say that by virtue of the fact that God wills this, and his will is immutable, Devin’s predestination is certain, and his acceptance of grace will certainly be brought to pass. Yet because God could’ve chosen to predestine Christopher Hitchens instead of Devin Rose, his will that Devin Rose accept grace is not absolutely necessary. Yet if we suppose that God does in fact will Devin Rose to accept His grace and be glorified (as I hope is the case), then the effect of divine will—Devin’s acceptance of grace and his salvation to glory—will “take place from necessity” by virtue of God’s immutable will whereby everything he wills comes to pass (ST I.23.6). Thus, for Aquinas, if God wills that anyone (Devin, me, 2-Pac, or Mother Teresa) freely accept His grace, this will happen out of necessity (as Aquinas says). Only Aquinas makes sure we understand this is a conditional necessity:
In the above quotation Aquinas points us back to ST I.19.3 where his meaning is further explicated but ends with the conclusion that although God may not will something by absolute necessity, it can be necessary “by supposition.”
Here Aquinas teaches that in fact everything God wills outside himself (which in Aquinas includes that some freely and infallibly accept grace at the instant of the infusion of grace) will come to pass necessarily, given that He wills it. It’s not an absolute necessity simply because God could’ve willed otherwise, but given that this is what he wills, it is necessary.
You, on the other hand, claim that any soteriology where “resistance is impossible” re-defines human freedom in a way repugnant to Aquinas. Yet Aquinas would say that given the supposition that God wills certain people to not reject (or cease from rejecting) His grace, it would be impossible for anything to happen otherwise. And this is the only sense in which I hold to anything that could go by the name “irresistible grace.” It is also the only sense in which Calvinists (as far as I can tell) believe in “irresistible grace” even though they don’t articulate the ideas as carefully as Aquinas and thus often have a proclivity toward imprecision and philosophically insensitive rhetoric.
Just so we are clear here: The only sense in which Aquinas (or I myself) holds to anything like “irresistible grace” is that Aquinas would say that given the supposition that God wills certain people to not reject (or cease from rejecting) His grace, it would be impossible for anything to happen otherwise. This Aquinas labels as something that imposes necessity “by supposition.”
Now none of this does away with contingency in predestination, for the person predestined must come to accept grace if she is to be saved, and her salvation depends upon it. Even though salvation is dependent upon faith, and justification contingent upon a free-will acceptance of God’s grace, both are the effects of God’s predestination. In “one act He wills both the end and means” (ST I.19.5).
b) :: EFFICACIOUS WILL IN AQUINAS :: But is God’s will (that some accept grace) “efficacious”? For Aquinas the answer is “yes.” I have even found a place where he uses these exact words.
Now one might take this quotation about contingency out of context to teach that God’s grace does not cause a person to accept His grace “efficaciously,” yet the whole point of this passage is to say that whether the effects come about necessarily or contingently, in either case they come about “efficaciously.” So some things happen infallibly, and others contingently, but all efficaciously. The “cause is efficacious to act” and “the effect follows upon the cause” and thus there is always an “efficacy of the divine will” (quoting from above).
Nevertheless on the topic in dispute—the acceptance of grace—Aquinas teaches that God wills this “infallibly.”
The movement of free will in the creature as part of the “order” God executes for the predestined can even be said to be “passive.”
5. :: ACCEPTANCE OF GRACE SUBSUMED UNDER THE OPERATION OF GRACE ::
Now I have tried to make the case that Aquinas subsumes the acceptance of grace under the operation of grace itself. Your response:
In spite of the fact that I have already demonstrated that Aquinas believes God’s grace does cause the acceptance of grace instantaneously when grace is “infused” (not offered), and in spite of the fact that you agree that to “accept grace” is to “not reject it (or cease from rejecting it),” you still want to say that for Aquinas grace doesn’t cause “the human decision to accept-grace-and-not-reject-grace.”
Thus, you are saying:
TRUE :: God’s grace causes sinners to accept His grace.
UNTRUE :: God’s grace causes sinners to accept-and-not-reject His grace.
You also, however, agree that to accept grace and to reject grace are two sides of the same coin. So then, your position seems to be that God causes one side of the coin and not the other, which is like saying that God causes the acceptance of grace but not the expelling of the defect which causes the rejection of grace. I must admit that whatever logic you are using to affirm that God can cause something to happen without causing its opposite to not happen (or cease from happening), you confound my own logical and linguistic sensibilities. Aquinas would say “perfections given to things by God expel defects” (ST 21.3), and he would say “Mercy and truth are necessarily found in all God’s works, if mercy be taken to mean the removal of any kind of defect” (ST I.21.4). Now justifying grace is certainly one of God’s greatest works, and moves the sinner to accept his grace. Why should we not believe that it simultaneously and instantly (at the movement of grace’s infusion) expels the defects in the sinner that cause the rejection of grace?
Nevertheless! … I have more from Aquinas that clarifies what I mean when I say that the movement of free-will to accept grace is itself caused by grace.
Let us consider that to accept grace is a “good” thing, much better than “rejecting” it, and the person who accepts God’s grace is certainly better off than the person who does not accept it. But the only reason one would attain to this good and another fail to attain to it has to do with God’s will, which “effectually” (to use the language Aquinas uses [ST I.19.8]) causes it to attain to this good:
6. :: CONCLUSION ::
To come full circle in our exchange, in light of the discussion about John Calvin’s doctrine of “double predestination,” I conclude that Aquinas and Calvin were not all that different.
That sums up quote succinctly what every Calvinist I have ever known or read believes about predestination and reprobation.
Now setting aside my previous complaint about how you tried to say I was misusing the word “simply” in reference to God’s willing “simply” the damnation of the damned—this above quotation from Aquinas is exactly what you condemn in John Calvin when you say:
“No reason, except the divine will” which for Aquinas is “efficacious” (as was seen above).
So even though you claim that I should be surprised that I can’t actually demonstrate my interpretation of Aquinas, you are unfortunately begging the question. I (and other onlookers on this thread) would say that I have demonstrated my interpretation of Aquinas is the more plausible. Given that your website is aimed at creating “unity” between Catholics and Reformed Protestants, I think I am more surprised (seconding Gaetano’s concern) that you are so strongly emphasizing something that is more of a stumbling block for Calvinistic Protestants. If my interpretation is “acceptable” to Catholicism, why not put the emphasis on that (given the CTC project’s intention)?
Looking forward to your reply,
Pax,
Bradley
Matt, (re: #69)
In this thread’s discussion there are three distinct questions: (1) what are the boundaries of Catholic orthodoxy, (2) what is the proper interpretation of St. Thomas, and (3) what is the better theological position within the boundaries of Catholic orthodoxy regarding the doctrine of predestination. The first question is the most important for ecumenical discussions, as I mentioned in comment #5 above. But the other two questions are also important. The second question is what I have been discussing with Bradley and William. The first part of my previous comment to you was about the first question. As you know, what counts as the boundaries of Catholic orthodoxy is what the Magisterium has defined or condemned on this question, not what St. Augustine or St. Thomas or Molina or Báñez wrote on the question. And that is what I laid out in the first part of my previous comment to you regarding double predestination. In presenting the boundaries of Catholic orthodoxy regarding this question I appealed only to Magisterial teaching. And that is quite distinct from the theological criticisms I offered of Garrigou-Lagrange’s statement, whose position is within the boundaries of Catholic orthodoxy, and which therefore was an answer to the third question.
Your response, it seems to me, is to point to certain places in St. Thomas and claim that he teaches the same thing as Calvin with regard to double predestination (or reprobation), and that since St. Thomas is within the bounds of Catholic orthodoxy, therefore (perhaps) so is Calvin on this doctrinal question. My response to that argument, in short, is that St. Thomas does not teach the same thing as does Calvin with respect to double predestination and reprobation, and that Calvin’s position in certain respects lies outside the bounds of Catholic orthodoxy (described above in comment #66), while St. Thomas’s position lies entirely within the bounds of Catholic orthodoxy. For St. Thomas, God does not predestine anyone to sin, God does not predestine anyone to hell, Christ died for all men without exception, grace sufficient for salvation is given to each, each person retains free will and only those are condemned who freely (with the ability to do otherwise) reject the sufficient grace given to them. For those reasons St. Thomas doctrine on this subject is within the bounds of Catholic orthodoxy (laid out in comment #66 above), and Calvin’s is not.
I agree with you that for St. Thomas, it is not so simple to say that reprobation is consequent upon foreseen demerit. I hope I didn’t imply as much. If I did, what I meant is that for St. Thomas damnation belongs to reprobation in this way, namely, that damnation is consequent on foreseen sin. For St. Thomas, reprobation is that part of God’s providential plan in which He permits some persons to freely fall away from the end which is eternal life. (ST I Q.23 a.3)
Let’s consider each of the quotations you cited.
For St. Thomas, “reprobation implies not only foreknowledge, but also something more, as does providence.” The “something more” is not a positive predestination to hell for any particular person, or a positive predestination to sin, but the intention to give grace in such a way that allows persons to resist grace freely even to death, rather than give grace in such a way that necessarily, all men are saved. The foreknowledge part of reprobation is God’s infallible and certain foreknowledge of who will in fact resist grace freely unto death.
Next St.Thomas writes:
When he says “so far .. as He does not will this particular good — namely, eternal life” to every rational creature, he is speaking of God’s consequent will. In ST I Q.23 a.4 ad 3 he writes,”God wills all men to be saved by His antecedent will, which is to will not simply but relatively; and not by His consequent will, which is to will simply.” (cf. ST I Q.19 a.6) As I explained in comment #57, “God’s consequent will is not a universal salvific will … in part because He wills to allow men to choose freely to reject the sufficient actual grace He offers all men.” Antecedently He wills the salvation of every person He created, but He has also willed that He will not force everyone to love Him, and therefore He has allowed men to freely and eternally reject Him. Hence His consequent will is not that every man is saved. The other factor in God’s consequent will is the more perfect manifestation of His goodness, for which reason it is better that rational creatures be allowed to resist grace freely unto death, (in the case of man) as I will discuss below, and be allowed to fall from grace freely (in the case of angels). St. Thomas is not here claiming that God positively predestines anyone to sin or creates anyone for the purpose of sending that person to hell.
Next St. Thomas raises the following objection. If God were to reprobate men, then God would be the cause of their destruction. But the sinner is the cause of his own destruction. Therefore, reprobation comes not from God but from man. To this objection St. Thomas replies:
There is no third category between reprobation and predestination, and yet for St. Thomas some persons fall from grace and die in mortal sin. So the grace St. Thomas has in mind here is the grace of perseverance, not sufficient grace. (ST I-II Q.114 a.9) St. Thomas affirms that it is possible to fall from grace by free will, for he writes, “[T]he book of life is the inscription of those ordained to eternal life, to which one is directed from two sources; namely, from predestination, which direction never fails, and from grace; for whoever has grace, by this very fact becomes fitted for eternal life. This direction fails sometimes; because some are directed by possessing grace, to obtain eternal life, yet they fail to obtain it through mortal sin.” (ST I Q.24 a.3) And thus the abandonment of which he speaks here [in ST I Q.23 a.3 ad 2] is the decision by God not to give grace in such a way that all persevere in sanctifying grace.
St. Thomas is not here claiming that in reprobation God withholds sufficient grace from anyone. Reprobation as caused by God is His permission to allow persons to resist sufficient grace even unto death, rather than give grace in such a way that necessarily, all persons are saved. That’s the sense in which God is the cause of the abandonment of which St. Thomas speaks. But nevertheless because the grace given is sufficient for cooperation unto salvation, and because man by his own free will rejects this sufficient grace, man’s free abandonment of God through sin is the reason why God justly punishes him with the everlasting divine abandonment which is hell. For St. Thomas, reprobation does not withhold sufficient grace from some persons, but permits them to resist it freely unto death. And for this reason St. Thomas’ position is not a positive predestination to hell, nor a positive predestination to sin, nor a denial of God’s universal salvific will for every person.
Concerning this sufficient grace, St. Thomas writes:
St. Thomas is not saying that grace is not offered to the reprobate. Otherwise, every baptized baby would be predestined to glory, given St. Thomas’ teaching on baptism. So when he speaks of acquiring grace, he is referring to obtaining-and-persevering in grace. The inability of the reprobate to obtain-and-persevere in grace is not an absolute impossibility, but a conditional impossibility. But if sufficient grace were not available to them, obtaining it would be an absolute impossibility. So what make it conditionally impossible for them to obtain-and-persevere in grace is (a) God’s decision not to overwhelm them with grace such that they cannot but persevere in grace, and (b) their own “liberty of choice” by which they freely reject the sufficient grace offered to them and fall into some sin or other, and die in a state of mortal sin. The predestined are, in themselves, capable of committing mortal sin and dying in mortal sin (ST I Q.23 a.6 ad 2), though when one includes the truth of their predestination, it is impossible for them to die in mortal sin. But that impossibility does not impose any necessity [i.e. impossibility to do otherwise] on the predestined. (ST I Q.22 a.4) Likewise, the reprobate are in themselves capable of freely cooperating with the sufficient grace offered to them, and thus dying in a state of grace, though when one includes their reprobation, it is impossible for them to die in a state of grace. But again, that impossibility does not impose necessity [i.e. impossibility to do otherwise] on the reprobate. Dying in a state of grace is only a conditional impossibility for the reprobate, as dying in mortal sin is only a conditional impossibility for the predestined. St. Thomas is not saying that God predestines the reprobate to sin by putting them in a situation where they cannot be sin, and he is not saying that God predestines anyone to hell.
You quoted from ST I Q.23 a.5 ad 3, in which St. Thomas says “why He chooses some for glory, and reprobates others, has no reason, except the divine will.” At first glance, that looks like the Calvinist notion of double predestination described above. But St. Thomas’s position is subtler. The objection he is answering is the argument that it would be unjust to give unequal things to equals, and therefore that God does not prepare unequal things for men by predestinating and reprobating, unless through the foreknowledge of their merits and demerits. In his reply to this objection, St. Thomas first answers two distinct questions. The first question is Why has God made a plan in which some are elected and some are reprobated. The second question is Why was this person elected and that person reprobated. St. Thomas’s answer to the first question is that through this plan [in which grace is given in such a way that persons are allowed to resist grace freely even to death], God’s goodness is more perfectly manifest, and many good things are not impeded. That’s the question he is answering when he writes,”The reason for the predestination of some, and reprobation of others, must be sought for in the goodness of God.”
St. Thomas’s answer to the second question is the source of the seemingly Calvinistic quotation. There St. Thomas cites St. Augustine’s warning against attempting to peer into the divine reason why He draws this person and not that person. St. Augustine himself, in the line that follows, urges the person who finds himself not drawn toward God to pray to God to be drawn to God, showing that for St. Augustine sufficient grace is available to pray to be drawn. St. Thomas explains that while we can see why multiple forms would be given to prime matter, it lies beyond us to determine why God chose this prime matter for the form of fire, and this prime matter for the form of earth, etc. (Of course St. Thomas knew that there could be no such thing as bits of prime matter; it is just an illustration.) For St. Thomas, how God determines who to elect and who to reprobate, has its ratio in the will of God, just as why God allows this infant to die as an infant, and that infant to live till ninety, has its ratio in the will of God. St. Thomas is talking about the distribution of unequal goods to equals (not the distribution of heaven to some and hell to others, even though hell is where the reprobate end up by their own doing).
St. Thomas is explaining here that this sort of distribution is not contrary to justice when the greater goods given are not owed to anyone, and the giver deprives no one of his due. Heaven is owed to no one, because it is a gratuitous gift, so God is not obliged by justice to predestine everyone to heaven, and the sufficient grace to avoid sin is given to all, so no one can say that he could not but commit mortal sin and die in mortal sin, and that therefore it is false that God truly wills all men to be saved, since God does not provide sufficient grace for the salvation of the reprobate. How this differs from Calvinism is already patent. St. Thomas is not teaching here that God positively predestines persons for hell, or positively predestines persons for sin. Calvin has no such thing as sufficient grace, or the notion that Christ died for the salvation of every single person, or the free will of the unregenerate by which they freely reject sufficient grace. For Calvin, God positively predestines some persons to hell in the same way He positively predestines some persons to heaven, as I explained in comment #66.
In the peace of Christ,
- Bryan
I appreciate your response.
1) I have not claimed that Calvin was orthodox, but I wanted to make sure that we evaluate Calvin’s position from the most “Augustinian” position acceptable within the boundaries of Catholic orthodoxy.
2) The clarification of reprobation in your third paragraph is entirely satisfactory, in my modest judgment.
3) And I think that my misapprehension (?) that one of your comments made reprobation consequent upon the foreknowledge of demerits was the basis for most of the apparent disagreements between us in the past few posts. I probably should give it another read-through, but (again IMHO) I found the rest of your presentation in the last comment quite satisfactory as an exposition of Thomas Aquinas.
4) Now, on the basis of this exposition, it may be useful to make a few references to Reformed sources. Forgive me if these texts have been addressed at length elsewhere on this website. The text that follow is from the Synod of Dordt:
“Article 15: Reprobation
Moreover, Holy Scripture most especially highlights this eternal and undeserved grace of our election and brings it out more clearly for us, in that it further bears witness that not all people have been chosen but that some have not been chosen or have been passed by in God’s eternal election– those, that is, concerning whom God, on the basis of his entirely free, most just, irreproachable, and unchangeable good pleasure, made the following decision: to leave them in the common misery into which, by their own fault, they have plunged themselves; not to grant them saving faith and the grace of conversion; but finally to condemn and eternally punish them (having been left in their own ways and under his just judgment), not only for their unbelief but also for all their other sins, in order to display his justice. And this is the decision of reprobation, which does not at all make God the author of sin (a blasphemous thought!) but rather its fearful, irreproachable, just judge and avenger.”
I don’t mean to change the conversation from a discussion of Calvin to one on Dordt, but this would more closely approximate a “magisterial document” in the Reformed tradition. I think that it would be fruitful to discuss how this breaks with Catholic orthodoxy and/or with the teaching of Thomas Aquinas. If it is acceptable, then a conversation on Calvin’s position becomes even more interesting…
Here is a passage or two from the Westminster Confession:
“III. By the decree of God, for the manifestation of His glory, some men and angels[6] are predestinated unto everlasting life; and others foreordained to everlasting death.[7]”
It is noteworthy that the Confession does not use the term predestination for the eternal will to damn some.
Greater clarity comes further on:
“VII. The rest of mankind God was pleased, according to the unsearchable counsel of His own will, whereby He extends or withholds mercy, as He pleases, for the glory of His sovereign power over His creatures, to pass by; and to ordain them to dishonor and wrath for their sin, to the praise of His glorious justice.[17]”
The ordination to wrath comes as a consequence of sin. The language of “reprobation” in the Confession seems negative to me (“withholds mercy,” “pass by”). Do you disagree? Of course, I would have liked reprobation to be rooted in God’s goodness (as Aquinas does), but I’m not sure that this is critical for our evaluation of this statement.
I am not suggesting in any way that Dordt and Westminster are without error from the perspective of Roman Catholic orthodoxy, but it does not seem to me that the teaching on reprobation here falls outside of those boundaries, but I certainly may be missing something. Thank you again for your response, Bryan.
Bradley, (re: #74)
I’m short on time, so I’ll respond briefly here only to what I think the most pertinent parts of your post.
That’s not what I mean by sufficient actual grace. I mean sufficient for cooperation unto salvation. For St. Thomas, “[T]hose alone are deprived of grace who offer an obstacle within themselves to grace.” (SCG III.159.2) The obstacle they offer is to sufficient grace, not to insufficient grace. No man can say to God, “You didn’t give me enough grace to avoid mortal sin and hell.”
I agree that St. Thomas uses the archer-arrow analogy, but St. Thomas intended the analogy to be taken mutatis mutandis, since arrows are non-rational beings and humans are rational beings. If one failed to make those necessary changes, one would be treating God’s movement of the rational creature the way the hand moves the staff. God moves the rational creature in a way that preserves its nature and thus its freedom, which means preserving its ability to choose otherwise, and thus its ability to resist grace. “[T]he movement of grace does not impose necessity; but he who has grace can fail to make use of it, and can sin.” (ST I Q.62 a.3)
See comment #68 on the relation for St. Thomas between freedom and necessity.
If that is indeed the only sense in which you mean the term, “irresistible grace,” then your disagreement with me need be nothing more than semantic. But, that is not how the term ‘irresistible grace’ is ordinarily used. It is not referring to a conditional necessity that the person die in a state of grace; it is referring to a species of grace, a mode of divine movement in the soul against which the human will cannot move.
I do not agree. There is no cooperation in Calvinistic regeneration because the divine movement in the soul is said to be irresistible intrinsically, in itself. And in Calvinism falling from grace (and becoming unregenerate) is impossible once one has been regenerated, because the divine movement in the soul is irresistible in itself. That’s the notion of grace condemned in the Jansenist heresy, “Grace is nothing else than the omnipotent Will of God, ordering and doing what He orders.” (Denz. 1361; cf. 1369) And the irresistibility of grace was also condemned: “When God wishes to save a soul and touches it with the interior hand of His grace, no human will resists Him.” (Denz. 1363)
There is no such thing as an effect coming about efficaciously.
That is philosophically confused and not what St. Thomas is saying here. Causes are either efficacious or inefficacious, but events do not come about “efficaciously.” (To see why, try to imagine an event coming about non-efficaciously.) If you simply mean that all effects have sufficient causes, then yes, but that is not what St. Thomas is saying here. In this paragraph he is explaining how God, whose consequent will is perfectly efficacious, brings about both contingent effects and necessary effects. And that is fully compatible with what I’ve been saying.
You cite the following quotation from St.Thomas as if it is problematic for what I have been saying:
I explained above (in comments #49, #57) how for St. Thomas the infallibility of God’s plan does not entail that God moves the free creature with an irresistible movement, such that their power to resist is removed or suppressed. Grace does not corrupt creation by nullifying the free will of rational creatures at the moment of justification by faith.
In terms of confounding your logical and linguistic sensibilities, I have not been as clear as I should have been. I agree that for St. Thomas actual grace moves free creatures, moves free creatures to accept grace, and moves free creatures not to reject grace. I also agree that for St. Thomas, merit is not the cause of predestination. What I have been arguing is that for St. Thomas God moves each creature according to its nature, and so moves free creatures in a way that preserves their natural freedom, i.e. their ability to do otherwise, even while infallibly bringing about His plan of redemption. So God infallibly brings about His plan, and also at the same time “[T]hose alone are deprived of grace who offer an obstacle within themselves to grace.” (SCG.159.2)
No, it is not. See my most recent comment to Matt (comment #73), where I explain the difference between St. Thomas’s understanding of reprobation and that of Calvin.
There are two kinds of stumbling blocks. One kind is adiaphora unnecessarily placed in the path of those seeking full communion with the Church. Another kind is dogma that is the occasion for stumbling to those who still prefer their own private judgment to the teaching of the Church. We (at CTC) think that Calvinists who are considering returning to full communion with the Catholic Church should be told the truth about the Catholic faith they would need to believe and profess as Catholics. And for that reason, along with the reasons I laid out in my most recent comment to Matt (i.e. comment #73), it would be misleading to tell such persons that Calvin’s doctrine of predestination and reprobation is so similar to that of St. Thomas that since St. Thomas’ doctrine is within the bounds of Catholic orthodoxy, therefore they could retain Calvin’s doctrine of predestination and reprobation when becoming Catholic. Of course that does not mean that we cannot (or should not) acknowledge the common ground between Calvin and St. Thomas on this doctrine. But it does mean that we ought to make the differences clear as well, especially with respect to those teachings that lie outside the bounds of orthodoxy.
In the peace of Christ,
- Bryan
Matt, (re: #76)
What places the doctrine described in those two documents outside the bounds of Catholic orthodoxy is its denial that Christ died also for the salvation of the reprobate (Denz. 1096, 1294), that grace merited by Christ and sufficient for salvation is given to the reprobate (Denz. 1295-6), and that the unregenerate freely reject sufficient grace. This makes that doctrine incompatible with the truth of the Catholic doctrine that God desires all men without exception to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth (Denz. 318). In Catholic doctrine God desires the salvation of the reprobate, hence the following Jansenist error was condemned: “All whom God wishes to save through Christ, are infallibly saved.” (Denz. 1380)
In Catholic doctrine, the reprobate can truly avoid sin, since God never commands the impossible, but always provides the means for us to do what He commands. But in the Reformed system the reprobate cannot but sin, and therefore (from the Catholic point of view) they do not sin freely, and therefore they cannot demerit (just as persons in hell cannot demerit: cf. Summa Theologica Supp. Q.98 a.6). (Denz. 1094, 1291) Even though the doctrine of reprobation described in those two Reformed documents looks very similar to the Catholic doctrine, because the reprobate in the Reformed system are not free to avoid sin (they are born already under wrath by the imputation of Adam’s sin, and without free will with respect to that which is salutary, and without sufficient grace), the Reformed doctrine of reprobation is still a positive predestination to hell.
Merely placing an intermediate stage between creating the reprobate and sending them to hell does not avoid positively predestining them to hell when it is not in their power to do anything but sin during the intermediate stage, just as there being 30,000 feet between an airplane and the ground does not avoid positively predestining a man to death-by-impact when pushing him out of the plane without a parachute. In Catholic doctrine, hell is not positively predestined for the reprobate because they have the freedom in this present life to cooperate with the sufficient grace given to them, and they freely choose to reject it.
In the peace of Christ,
- Bryan
Are these points about Reformed soteriology derived from what I quoted or from elsewhere? Would you mind quoting a few relevant passages from Dordt? I don’t deny in any way that they are there, but I am just not sure if you are pointing to what I cited or not.
Thanks, Bryan.
Matt, (re: #79)
For the Reformed notion that Christ died only for the predestined, see Dordt, Pt.2 Art. 8. On fallen man’s total inability, see Dordt, Pts. 3-4, Art.3 and Error VI. The notion of sufficient grace is denied in Dordt Pts. 3-4 Error V. The efficacy of grace is laid out in Dordt Pts. 3-4 Art.10-14, Errors VII and VIII.
In the peace of Christ,
- Bryan
But do you disagree that the passages I quoted, which speak most directly to the issue of reprobation, are within the boundaries of Catholic orthodoxy, at least technically (that is, when not read in relation to these other connected yet still formally distinct doctrines)?
And while I think it would be useful for you to point out exactly what passages you believe to be outside of the boundaries of Catholic orthodoxy, I’ll provide the texts and offer some brief commentary.
SO-CALLED LIMITED ATONEMENT
“Article 8: The Saving Effectiveness of Christ’s Death
For it was the entirely free plan and very gracious will and intention of God the Father that the enlivening and saving effectiveness of his Son’s costly death should work itself out in all his chosen ones, in order that he might grant justifying faith to them only and thereby lead them without fail to salvation. In other words, it was God’s will that Christ through the blood of the cross (by which he confirmed the new covenant) should effectively redeem from every people, tribe, nation, and language all those and only those who were chosen from eternity to salvation and given to him by the Father; that he should grant them faith (which, like the Holy Spirit’s other saving gifts, he acquired for them by his death); that he should cleanse them by his blood from all their sins, both original and actual, whether committed before or after their coming to faith; that he should faithfully preserve them to the very end; and that he should finally present them to himself, a glorious people, without spot or wrinkle.”
MATT: I would think that the offending passage would be Dordt’s statement that Christ through the blood of the cross “effectively redeem[s]…all those and *only* those who were chosen from eternity to salvation.”
What would we say about this important text from Aquinas (commentary on I Timothy)?: Christus est medium coniungens, quia est iustus et mortalis, et per suam mortem coniungit nos Dei iustitiae. I Io. II, 2: ipse est propitiatio pro peccatis nostris, pro aliquibus efficaciter, sed pro omnibus sufficienter, quia pretium sanguinis eius est sufficiens ad salutem omnium: sed non habet efficaciam nisi in electis propter impedimentum.
Rough translation of last sentence: “He is the propitiation for our sins, for some efficaciously/effectively but for all sufficiently since the price of His blood is sufficient for the salvation of all, but does not have efficacy except in the elect because of the/an impediment.” It seems like the word “effectively” might help Dordt dodge the bullet, no?
TOTAL INABILITY:
Article 3: Total Inability
Therefore, all people are conceived in sin and are born children of wrath, unfit for any saving good, inclined to evil, dead in their sins, and slaves to sin; without the grace of the regenerating Holy Spirit they are neither willing nor able to return to God, to reform their distorted nature, or even to dispose themselves to such reform.
AQUINAS: “So, too, before man’s reason, wherein is mortal sin, is restored by justifying grace, he can avoid each mortal sin, and for a time, since it is not necessary that he should be always actually sinning. But it cannot be that he remains for a long time without mortal sin.” “Man by himself can no wise rise from sin without the help of grace.”
MATT: I’m not sure exactly about which statement is heretical in the previous passage.
DORDT condemns those “who teach that unregenerate man is not strictly or totally dead in his sins or deprived of all capacity for spiritual good but is able to hunger and thirst for righteousness or life and to offer the sacrifice of a broken and contrite spirit which is pleasing to God.”
Aquinas says, “The natural reason is not the sufficient principle of the health that is in man by justifying grace. This principle is grace which is taken away by sin. Hence man cannot be restored by himself; but he requires the light of grace to be poured upon him anew, as if the soul were infused into a dead body for its resurrection [not exactly the same context, but I don't see the problem with talking about fallen man in a state of 'death'].”
DENIAL OF SUFFICIENT GRACE:
When Dordt condemns those “who teach that corrupt and natural man can make such good use of common grace (by which they mean the light of nature) or of the gifts remaining after the fall that he is able thereby gradually to obtain a greater grace– evangelical or saving grace–as well as salvation itself; and that in this way God, for his part, shows himself ready to reveal Christ to all people, since he provides to all, to a sufficient extent and in an effective manner, the means necessary for the revealing of Christ, for faith, and for repentance.”
MATT: Now, this passage appears to be more troubling, but we must understand the context of the debates at Dordt. Arminius was, in the view of some recent historians, offering a Jesuit perspective on sufficient grace. It would not be heresy to reject such a view. Could this passage be glossed in a Banezian way, i.e., as rejecting a sufficient grace that is not intrinsically distinct (?) from efficient grace?
EFFICACY OF GRACE:
Article 10: Conversion as the Work of God
The fact that others who are called through the ministry of the gospel do come and are brought to conversion must not be credited to man, as though one distinguishes himself by free choice from others who are furnished with equal or sufficient grace for faith and conversion (as the proud heresy of Pelagius maintains). No, it must be credited to God: just as from eternity he chose his own in Christ, so within time he effectively calls them, grants them faith and repentance, and, having rescued them from the dominion of darkness, brings them into the kingdom of his Son, in order that they may declare the wonderful deeds of him who called them out of darkness into this marvelous light, and may boast not in themselves, but in the Lord, as apostolic words frequently testify in Scripture.
MATT: Where is the heresy in this passage?
Article 11: The Holy Spirit’s Work in Conversion
Moreover, when God carries out this good pleasure in his chosen ones, or works true conversion in them, he not only sees to it that the gospel is proclaimed to them outwardly, and enlightens their minds powerfully by the Holy Spirit so that they may rightly understand and discern the things of the Spirit of God, but, by the effective operation of the same regenerating Spirit, he also penetrates into the inmost being of man, opens the closed heart, softens the hard heart, and circumcises the heart that is uncircumcised. He infuses new qualities into the will, making the dead will alive, the evil one good, the unwilling one willing, and the stubborn one compliant; he activates and strengthens the will so that, like a good tree, it may be enabled to produce the fruits of good deeds.
MATT: Is this passage heretical? I know that you and Bradley have been discussing the matter of God making the unwilling willing. Does the wording here cross the boundary of orthodoxy?
Article 12: Regeneration a Supernatural Work
And this is the regeneration, the new creation, the raising from the dead, and the making alive so clearly proclaimed in the Scriptures, which God works in us without our help. But this certainly does not happen only by outward teaching, by moral persuasion, or by such a way of working that, after God has done his work, it remains in man’s power whether or not to be reborn or converted. Rather, it is an entirely supernatural work, one that is at the same time most powerful and most pleasing, a marvelous, hidden, and inexpressible work, which is not lesser than or inferior in power to that of creation or of raising the dead, as Scripture (inspired by the author of this work) teaches. As a result, all those in whose hearts God works in this marvelous way are certainly, unfailingly, and effectively reborn and do actually believe. And then the will, now renewed, is not only activated and motivated by God but in being activated by God is also itself active. For this reason, man himself, by that grace which he has received, is also rightly said to believe and to repent.
MATT: In what it says (not in what it may leave out), it is not evident to me that this fundamentally breaks with the Banezian view of efficacious grace that is infallible in its effect.
Article 13: The Incomprehensible Way of Regeneration
In this life believers cannot fully understand the way this work occurs; meanwhile, they rest content with knowing and experiencing that by this grace of God they do believe with the heart and love their Savior.
MATT: Dordt is hesitant about spelling out the modality of God’s efficacious grace. We might appreciate that today. Some Reformed adopt the Dominican notion of physical premotion which does attempt to *explain* some aspects of divine action.
Article 14: The Way God Gives Faith
In this way, therefore, faith is a gift of God, not in the sense that it is offered by God for man to choose, but that it is in actual fact bestowed on man, breathed and infused into him. Nor is it a gift in the sense that God bestows only the potential to believe, but then awaits assent–the act of believing–from man’s choice; rather, it is a gift in the sense that he who works both willing and acting and, indeed, works all things in all people produces in man both the will to believe and the belief itself.
MATT: This also seems to be a passage directed against the Molinist/Arminian notion of sufficient grace. I can provide evidence that Reformed theologians of the seventeenth century believe that God works all things sweetly, in a way that is in accord with human nature and the freedom of the human will. If so, would this passage be heretical?
DORDT also addresses the efficacy of grace when it condemns those “who teach that the grace by which we are converted to God is nothing but a gentle persuasion, or(as others explain it) that the way of God’s acting in man’s conversion that is most noble and suited to human nature is that which happens by persuasion, and that nothing prevents this grace of moral suasion even by itself from making natural men spiritual; indeed, that God does not produce the assent of the will except in this manner of moral suasion, and that the effectiveness of God’s work by which it surpasses the work of Satan consists in the fact that God promises eternal benefits while Satan promises temporal ones” AND those “who teach that God in regenerating man does not bring to bear that power of his omnipotence whereby he may powerfully and unfailingly bend man’s will to faith and conversion, but that even when God has accomplished all the works of grace which he uses for man’s conversion, man nevertheless can, and in actual fact often does, so resist God and the Spirit in their intent and will to regenerate him, that man completely thwarts his own rebirth; and, indeed, that it remains in his own power whether or not to be reborn.”
MATT: Is God’s action (supernatural) on the human will merely persuasion? Consider the words of Garrigou-Lagrange: “Otherwise all the theologians of the Society agree in this matter, that they should not return to the infallible, intrinsic efficacy of grace, that is, as coming from divine omnipotence. And Congruism is therefore only whitewashed Molinism, for even in the former, ultimately, grace is infallibly efficacious, not because God so wills, but because man wills it to be efficacious. Hence God is always regarded as a created cause, urging and attracting, as a friend persuades a friend to choose the good. Whereas God is in reality infinitely more powerful than my most beloved friend to persuade me, more so than the guardian angels, or the highest angels capable of being created, and God does not only move by attracting objectively, but interiorly by contact with the will from within, inasmuch as He is closer to it than it is to itself, as we shall see.”
The second part of the passage, where grace is made irresistible, poses an interesting problem. It rejects the notion that man “can” thwart God’s will and his own rebirth. Now, I would suggest that such a statement is orthodox if we are saying that man “cannot” resist God in a composite sense, even if it must be the case that man “can” resist God in the divided sense. It seems to me that the passage’s closely tying this “can” to “and in actual fact does” suggests the divided sense, though one cannot be sure without more research. Seventeenth-century Reformed theologians seem to have taken such a view. Consider Voetius, student of Gomarus (leading Counter-Remonstrant at Dort):
http://books.google.com/books?id=pI_uEr_1rW0C&pg=PA183&dq=Voetius+divided+composite+sense&hl=en&sa=X&ei=L-kMT-b0BK702wX4j7TjBw&ved=0CDQQ6AEwAA#v=snippet&q=%22that%20a%20wills%20differently%20than%20God%20has%20decided%22&f=false
What do you think?
I am not attempting to gloss over differences here. But I hope that the effort here will be seen at least as one small stage in the ongoing ecumenical enterprise so fruitfully developed on this blog. Where shall we go from here? Thank you for your patience with my ignorance of how to format this more effectively.
Thanks again, Bryan.
Matt, (re: #81)
A theology is a whole paradigm and system, and can be accurately understood only as a whole paradigm and system. It can’t be rightly understood piecemeal, and for that reason theological systems cannot be rightly compared piecemeal. The same proposition can have a different broader meaning in one paradigm than it does in another paradigm. That’s why even if the excerpts you cited earlier (in #74) could (in abstraction from their system) be affirmed by an orthodox Catholic, the Reformed doctrine of reprobation cannot, for the reasons I explained in comment #76.
No. You seem to be trying find words and passages here and there in St. Thomas that are similar to passages in Calvin and Dordt, in order to attempt to show that these Reformed positions are not heretical, or not so heretical as we might think. But that’s not a good methodology, since the presence of similarities or even identical words between these Reformed documents and St. Thomas is fully compatible with the former being heretical and the latter being orthodox. All heresy (at least any heresy worth its salt) is similar to orthodoxy; otherwise no one would be deceived by it. It works only if it is similar. So finding semantic similarities like that does not seem to be useful, because it is like finding leaves on tree; it is just what we would expect. But inferring from such similarities to any kind of conclusion about the orthodoxy of the Reformed position is misguided, because it presupposes a kind of theological reductionism that fails to see how these statements and terms have very different meanings in their respective systems, and therefore have to be compared from within their respective systems.
In this case, for example, the whole Reformed conception of atonement is an entirely different paradigm from that of the Catholic doctrine of atonement found in St. Thomas, as I have explained in “Catholic and Reformed Conceptions of the Atonement.” For that reason, what St. Thomas means in the passage you cited is entirely different from what Calvin and the Reformed tradition mean by limited atonement. For the latter, Christ died for (and thus suffered the punishment for) only the sins of the elect. He didn’t die for the reprobate. By suffering the penalty for the sins of the elect, their salvation (and only their salvation) was purchased. If (per impossible) Christ now changed His mind and wanted to redeem the reprobate as well, He would have to die again, because their sins weren’t included in the punishment He endured 2,000 years ago. For St. Thomas and the Catholic Church, on the other hand, in His Passion and death Christ died for the sins of every single person in the world, by offering Himself in love to the Father to make satisfaction for the sins of the whole world. And thus by Christ’s sacrifice sufficient grace is offered to every last person in the world. But the benefit of Christ’s offering is enjoyed only by those to whom it is applied, through the sacraments, through our cooperation. That’s what St. Thomas is referring to by impediment, namely, those who resist sufficient grace. So St. Thomas is not in the least saying that Christ only died for the elect. The limitation is only at the point of application, not in the atonement, and the limitation is only by the culpable rejection on the part of those who reject Christ. Calvin’s position could hardly be any more different. For Calvin the limitation is at the level of application only because the atonement is already limited at the cross. Not so for St. Thomas.
Regarding total inability, again, these are two entirely different paradigms. I have explained them in part in “Protestant Objections to the Catholic Doctrines of Original Justice and Original Sin.” Moreover, Reformed position presupposes the non-existence of sufficient actual grace (see here for the distinction between actual and sanctifying grace), whereas St. Thomas teaches that distinction.
I could go on for each of the doctrines you refer to, but it would be too tedious, and at present I don’t have time, and you can see how explaining the paradigm differences for each of these different doctrines would take us far afield from the topic of this post.
In short, finding similarities between passages in St. Thomas and passages in Reformed documents doesn’t show anything except semantic similarities. We have to understand each paradigm as a whole paradigm, and then we can see how these similarities are only superficial. In substance, the positions are very different, even though in the substance of both positions there is common ground. But the best way to understand all this is to do three things: (a) immerse yourself in the Thomistic system so that you understand it as a whole, (b) immerse yourself in the Reformed system so that you understand it as a whole, and then carefully study the Council of Trent and all the condemned errors of Jansenism. That will allow you to see how and where the Reformed documents are outside the bounds of Catholic orthodoxy.
In the peace of Christ,
- Bryan
Bryan,
I am perplexed by this response. It may be because I might have a somewhat different vision of ecumenical dialogue, but let’s put that aside.
Incidentally, it’s important to allow for the possibility of differences between Calvin and Dordt, differences that may be positive from the perspective of Roman Catholic orthodoxy (this seems to be the view of a major eighteenth-century theologian, Gazzaniga).
See also http://www.calvin.edu/meeter/lectures/Richard%20Muller%20-%20Was%20Calvin%20a%20Calvinist.pdf
The Reformed theologians of this period had a rather profound grasp of the texts of Thomas Aquinas and High Scholasticism, as well as the writings of his major interpreters (Cajetan, Soto Medina, Banez, and so on). Is it possible that there may have been some convergence between Thomism and the Reformed tradition on some of these theological issues? Could the fact that Dordt seems to have avoided some of the harshest statements of Calvin on, say, reprobation be a source of encouragement for Roman Catholics? Why must we assume that the teachings of the Counter-Remonstrants on these points are heretical?
Of course, I don’t deny that attention to systems and paradigms, etc., is important. But the Magisterium does not have a problem condemning propositions, as you well know. If the whole paradigm is deeply implicated in heresy, it should not be difficult to find a heretical statement from Dordt on “irresistible” grace or the limitedness of the Atonement or double predestination. I always find your expositions quite eloquent, but at this point it may be more useful to offer just a couple of pieces of *evidence* that confirm your point of view.
Matt,
I’m curious to know which Reformed Scholastics you are referring to when you speak of those who had a profound grasp of Aquinas’s theology. From what I can tell, the Protestant Scholastics, following Luther, had much more in common with Scotus than Thomas. The Calvinistic view of predestination seems to me, at least, to be dependent upon the voluntarism of Scotus (resulting in Luther’s deus absconditus). From this angle, despite surface level agreements between Thomas and Calvin, there are much profounder philosophical differences that do seem to play an important part in the difference between Aquinas and Calvin (or Peter Martyr Vermigli, or Turretin, etc.). As Wawrykow himself highlights in his book on Aquinas’s understanding of merit, the role of Wisdom plays a central role in Thomas’s understanding of grace which is absent in Calvin or Luther (who place the will above the intellect–this also explains their extreme suspicion against ‘speculation’).
My two cents.
Joshua
Matt,
How are the said “similarities” between Reformed theology and St. Thomas similar or different to the “similarities” between Reformed theology and Scripture? How different would two theological positions have to be for them to be considered dissimilar or incompatible?
Dear Joshua,
Thanks for your post. I am aware of the importance of Scotism to recent discussions of Reformed theology, though I have not followed these debates very closely. My reflections are in the main based on the work of Richard A. Muller.
By saying that they have a grasp of Thomas’ texts, I did not mean that the Reformed scholastics were all “Thomists.” Indeed, I perhaps too cryptically attempted to include Scotus (without adding more names to the discussion) when I noted that they knew the texts of “High Scholasticism.” (And I have very infrequently referred to the works of Luther and Calvin, if at all.) But my own sense is that the Reformed scholastics are rather eclectic, and it is quite possible that they are reading Thomas through Scotistic lenses (as some of the great Catholic commentators of that same era might also have done). I have found the works of Zanchi (a bit early), Voetius, Samuel Ward, Samuel Rutherford, and others to show an impressive grasp of medieval and contemporary scholastic debates. Keckermann is also very interesting here.
But as for the superiority of the will over the intellect, there seems to be at least some disagreement on that very point in the Reformed tradition. Carl Trueman seems to argue that Owen is an intellectualist, for example.
Thanks again. I’d love to see a study of deus absconditus in Protestant scholaticism. Very interesting possibilities.
Brent,
Thanks for your comment.
I don’t have a fully worked-out theory of how to account for when a certain position is incompatible with another (besides the obvious–logical contradiction, etc.). But I would think that Roman Catholics should start by presenting what they believe to be clearly heretical in, say, the Synod of Dordt. Then we can compare the “positions” of the Magisterium as well as major Catholic, “authentic” doctors to those statements. I suspect that such a conversation would bear fruit.
I’m not sure how to answer the point about Scripture, though I’d be happy to do so once the comment becomes clearer to me.
Matt, (re: #83)
Dordt teaches that it is false that there can be “an election to justifying faith apart from a peremptory election to salvation [i.e. to heaven].” (Pt. 1 Error 2) But that is contrary to Trent VI Can. 17, which condemns the error of claiming that only those predestined to life obtain justifying grace.
Dordt teaches that it is false that “in this life there is no fruit, no awareness, and no assurance of one’s unchangeable election to glory, except as conditional upon something changeable and contingent.” (Pt. 1 Error 7) But that is incompatible with Trent VI Can. 16, which denies the possibility of absolute and infallible certainty of election to glory except by a special revelation.
Dordt teaches that only the elect receive justifying faith ["he might grant justifying faith to them only"]. (Pt. 2 Art. 8) That is contrary to Trent VI Can. 17, which condemns the error of claiming that only those predestined to life obtain justifying grace.
Dordt teaches that regeneration is something God “works in us without our help.” (Pts. 3-4 Art. 12) But this is condemned in Trent VI Can. 4, which condemns the notion that “man’s free will moved and aroused by God does not cooperate by assenting to God who rouses and calls, whereby it [i.e. the will] disposes and prepares itself to obtain the grace of justification.”
Dordt teaches that the will is active only after regeneration. (Pts. 3-4 Art. 12) But Trent VI. Canons 4 and 7 anathematize this notion.
Dordt teaches that it is false that the unregenerate man is deprived of all capacity for spiritual good and is able to hunger and thirst for righteousness. (Pts. 3-4 Error 4) But this is just what actual grace works in the unregenerate, prior to the reception of sanctifying grace. That’s why the Church has condemned this error in Jansenism. (cf. Denz. 1388-1395)
Dordt teaches that all those who have been converted are preserved in grace to the end (i.e. to death), (Pt. 5 Art. 3), and that God does not take His Holy Spirit from them (Pt. 5 Art. 6). But that is condemned by Trent VI. Canons 23 and 27, which show that the justified can lose grace, and die in that condition, since not only the predestined receive justifying grace.
Dordt teaches that without some private revelation, believers can and do become assured [with the measure of their faith] with the “reliable guarantee” that they will be preserved unto eternal glory. (Pt. 5 Art. 9,10) That notion is condemned by Trent VI. Canon 16.
Dordt teaches that it is an error that “those who truly believe and have been born again not only can forfeit justifying faith as well as grace and salvation totally and to the end, but also in actual fact do often forfeit them and are lost forever.” (Pt. 5 Error 3) But the Catholic Church condemns the claim that the justified cannot lose grace (Trent VI Can. 23)
Dordt teaches that it is an error that those who truly believe and have been born again can commit the sin that leads to death. (Pt 5 Error 4) But this is condemned by Trent VI Can. 27, which condemns the limitation of mortal sin to infidelity, and therefore a fortiori condemns the denial of the very possibility of mortal sin for the justified. This error is also condemned in Trent VI Can. 28-29, again by a fortiori entailment.
Dordt teaches that it is false that “apart from a special revelation no one can have the assurance of future perseverance in this life.” (Pt. 5 Error 5) But Trent VI Can. 16 condemns the claim that without special revelation we can have an absolute and infallible certainty we have the gift of perseverance.
Dordt teaches that it is false that “it is not absurd that a person after losing his former regeneration, should once again, indeed quite often, be reborn.” (Pt 5 Error VIII) That is condemned by Trent XIV, which is the session on the Sacrament of Penance, that sacrament precisely by which those who lose their regeneration through mortal sin are reborn.
In the peace of Christ,
- Bryan
We haven’t been talking about eternal security or assurance. We have been talking about double predestination, the efficacy of grace, and the “limits” of the atonement. I agree that much of Dordt’s “fifth point” would be outside of Tridentine orthodoxy.
But I should say that I appreciate your general approach in the last comment. Thanks!
These three paragraphs seem most pertinent to our discussion up to this point:
Canon 4 was also, it should be noted, used against the Dominicans by the Molinists. GL takes this Canon as a potential objection to his position on efficacious grace:
You can see his response here: http://www.ewtn.com/library/Theology/grace7.htm
Now, I suppose that you can read this as heretical–I’ll need to do more thinking–but I still wonder if context can help us here. This article seems quite clearly to be directed at a Molinist-Arminian notion of cooperation where our help is involved in making grace efficacious. Grace can, as you know, be distinguished into operative and cooperative. Aquinas says, “Hence in that effect in which our mind is moved and does not move, but in which God is the sole mover, the operation is attributed to God, and it is with reference to this that we speak of “operating grace.”
I want to repeat that I am not making any strong assertions here, but I wonder if the long controversies prompted by Canon 4, the notion of operative grace where God does is the sole mover, and the position of Dordt’s opponents (which used the help of the will in a particular way) may help us interpret this article a bit more charitably.
Luther’s and Calvin’s notions of preparatory or disposing works is deeply problematic from a Tridentine perspective, I freely admit. I do wonder if any ground shifted here over the course of the sixteenth century. I do agree with you that, at least after baptism, the Reformed view of original sin and concupiscence is quite problematic.
See my comments above about works of preparation, though I should note at least in passing that there are debates about the place of regeneration in Thomas’ view of the ordo salutis. At any rate, preparation is a critical issue for continued ecumenical dialogue.
Thanks, I’ve found this discussion quite fruitful.
Pax,
Matt
One more post: the most important part of our discussion of Dordt, it seems, has been the matter of double predestination, which has kind of slipped through the cracks. Am I correct in thinking that your main problem with Dordt’s teaching on reprobation is the absence of a discussion of sufficient grace?
Matt, (re: #90)
I don’t think GL’s comments are heretical, even though I disagree with them for the reasons I explained in a previous comment. There is nothing heretical about the notion of intrinsically efficacious grace. But that does not make Dordt’s notion that regeneration is something God “works in us without our help” (Pts. 3-4 Art. 12) compatible with what Trent VI Can. 4 says about our cooperation, disposing and preparing ourselves to obtain the grace of justification. Dordt’s theology lacks the distinction between actual grace and sanctifying grace. Therefore, for Dordt, any salutary cooperation on the part of the not-yet-justified-man is ipso facto Pelagianism or semi-Pelagianism. But GL doesn’t have that problem, because he has the distinction between actual grace and sanctifying grace.
What makes Dordt heretical here is that it places cooperation only after regeneration. For St. Thomas (and Catholic theology) operative grace is actual grace; justifying grace is sanctifying grace. Therefore in Catholic doctrine cooperation, disposing and preparing ourselves for justification is possible prior to justification-by-the-infusion-of-sanctifying-grace, but only subsequent to the movement of operative actual grace, and therefore without falling into semi-Pelagianism. If by “works [regeneration] in us without our help” Dordt actually meant “works regeneration in us with our help, though our help is not what makes the grace efficacious” then that’s what they should have said, because what they actually said doesn’t mean that, and cannot justifiably be interpreted to mean that.
Dordt denies cooperation in justification. Trent requires it. The incompatibility of these two claims simply cannot be massaged away. And good-faith ecumenism at some point requires us (both Protestants and Catholics) to call a spade a spade.
In the peace of Christ,
- Bryan
Bryan,
Dordt is in essential agreement with St. Thomas on the issue of regeneration and cooperation in justification discussed above (although different language is used).
If I have time (which might not happen in the foreseeable future) I’ll explain why.
God Bless,
William Scott
Hello all,
I’m sorry I haven’t had time to follow up in discussing the essential agreement of St. Aquinas and Dordt on the issues of regeneration and cooperation in justification (it simply would take too much time to carry on an exchange on this controversial point at the moment (I’m in law school with only a month and a half left till I get married to the greatest girl in the world!)) .
Anyhow, in the mean time I just wanted to leave everyone with a quick reminder that St Augustine explicitly taught “double predestination” long before it was fashionable:
These are the great works of the Lord, sought out according to all His pleasure, and so wisely sought out, that when the intelligent creation, both angelic and human, sinned, doing not His will but their own, He used the very will of the creature which was working in opposition to the Creator’s will as an instrument for carrying out His will, the supremely Good thus turning to good account even what is evil, to the condemnation of those whom in His justice He has predestined to punishment, and to the salvation of those whom in His mercy He has predestined to grace. For, as far as relates to their own consciousness, these creatures did what God wished not to be done: but in view of God’s omnipotence, they could in no wise effect their purpose. For in the very fact that they acted in opposition to His will, His will concerning them was fulfilled.
[Chapter 100. The Will of God is Never Defeated, Though Much is Done that is Contrary to His Will.]
http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1302.htm
God Bless,
William Scott
I would just add quickly to my thought on “double predestination” that for St. Augustine “original sin” is sufficient to this “predestination to punishment” as seen in his frequent discussions of how God’s completely unconditional election (and reprobation of all others in the “mass or perdition”) is demonstrated in God’s choice that one infant will die without Baptism and be punished for original sin while another infant is brought by God’s choice to Salvation in Baptism (although the elect infant equally deserved to be passed over and “predestined to punishment” on account of original sin).
Of course, I happen to disagree with St. Augustine’s position that there is a necessary foreordained condemnation for the infant who dies without Baptism. I hold out strong hope for God’s mercy on all infants and unborn who die without Baptism (as I assume everyone else on this thread does).
God Bless,
William Scott